ANTALYA, Turkey—Lindsey Vonn’s home mountains in Colorado will host the Alpine skiing world championships in 2015.
The International Ski Federation picked the Vail and Beaver Creek ski resorts Thursday ahead of rival bids from Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, and St. Moritz, Switzerland.
“I’m so excited!!!!” Vonn wrote on Twitter minutes after the result was announced. “Congrats to everyone in Vail and for all of your hard work!”
The decision sends the biennial event back to North America after seven straight championships in Europe.
Olympic downhill champion Vonn was a 14-year-old course volunteer when Vail-Beaver Creek last staged the worlds in 1999. Vail also hosted the event in 1989.
“Our nation is deeply honored to have been selected as the site of the 2015 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships,” Bill Marolt, head of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, said in a statement.
Vail won on the first round, receiving a majority eight of the 15 votes cast by members of the FIS ruling council. Cortina got four votes and St. Moritz three.
“We knew from the outset that we had our work cut out for us with three world class candidates,” said Ceil Folz, president of the Vail Valley Foundation. “We can’t wait to get home and share this with our community.”
The winning bid calls for a new women’s downhill course to be created for the championships in Beaver Creek. It will share a finish area with the adjoining men’s Birds of Prey course that was created for the ’99 worlds. Women’s technical races will be run on the Giant Steps course at Vail.
Vail-Beaver Creek finished second in the vote two years ago when all three of Thursday’s candidates lost to the Austrian resort of Schladming for the 2013 championships. Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany will hold the 2011 worlds next February.
In other votes Thursday, Falun in Sweden was awarded the 2015 Nordic skiing world championships.
Falun had an 8-7 edge over Lahti, Finland, in a third-round ballot after Zakopane, Poland, and Oberstdorf, Germany, were eliminated.
Kreischberg in Austria was awarded the 2015 freestyle and snowboard worlds as the only bidder. Harrachov in the Czech Republic was the lone candidate for the 2014 ski flying championship.
