When Joel Heath set out seven years ago to establish the Teva Mountain Games as the nation’s premier outdoor-adventure sports event, he and his tiny team at Edwards-based Untraditional Marketing didn’t have a lot to work with.
Cobbling together remnants of a low-key Memorial Day river festival with elements of an under-the-radar grassroots competition known as the “nonevent event series,” Heath somehow solicited enough interest to attract Teva as a headline sponsor and expand the Mountain Games to include freeride mountain biking, road cycling, rock climbing, trail running and a host of other offbeat endurance and adrenaline sports for a four-day festival oozing with life in the heart of Vail Village.
Beginning with just more than 250 athletes in 2002, the Teva Mountain Games drew a live audience of 35,000 to Vail last June and another million to television and Web broadcasts. It served as the first World Cup rock climbing competition on American soil in 20 years. Teva has inked its commitment through 2012.
But it wasn’t until late last week that the Teva Mountain Games officially “arrived.”
The lofty Vail Valley Foundation — producers of the annual Birds of Prey World Cup ski races and four world championships in alpine skiing and mountain biking — announced last week it had added the event to its portfolio and will begin production of next summer’s edition immediately.
“This is an opportunity to take it to the next level,” Heath said of the sale for an undisclosed amount. “They’ve got a bigger bankroll to see it through to take the steps I’ve always wanted to but didn’t have the financing to do. They have the opportunity to take on greater risks, to look at new competitions and new sports being added. The more we can bring mainstream sponsors into the adventure space, the bigger adventure sports can become.”
While there is some wisdom to Heath’s economic assertions — the VVF spent $4.7 million on “athletic programming” in 2007 — there also are quiet concerns over whether the posh foundation is an appropriate fit for such a rootsy event stretching beyond the VVF’s tradition of ski racing.
“The overall hope is to bring their onsite polish and fuse it with our core understanding of the sports and the athletes,” said Heath, who stays as a consultant the next two years. “If there’s any apprehension, it’s simply over the fact that it’s a change. But if you’re not changing, you’re dying.”
Indeed, after a challenging year in which the VVF lost its bid for a third alpine skiing world championship, failed at its attempted resurrection of bicycle racing with the cancellation of the Colorado Stage International and pulled the plug a year early on its withering foray into snowboarding known as The Session, the acquisition of the Teva Mountain Games may serve as a starting point for reinvention.
As evidenced by the success of hard-charging multisport festivals like the X Games and the AST Dew Tour — events Heath won’t deny attempting to mimic — affiliating with an established adventure-sports version right in its backyard is likely a step in the right direction for the VVF.
For the sake of adventure sports and one of the truly great Colorado grassroots success stories, hopefully the same holds true for the Teva Mountain Games.
