Vail and Beaver Creek plan to go big with the venerable Birds of Prey World Cup, transforming the alpine ski race week into a buzz-building valleywide festival during the typically lackluster early days of December.
“This is where winter will begin,” said Tom Boyd, spokesman for the Vail Valley Foundation, which is hosting the early-season festival. “This is the official kickoff to winter.”
The Dec. 1-6 will incorporate events of the retired American Ski Classic into the annual Birds of Prey World Cup ski races at Beaver Creek, with big-name concerts, an international ski hall of fame ceremony, nighttime legends’ racing and a VIP ticket available to the public.
Organizers hope the week will evolve into a party akin to the valley’s GoPro Mountain Games, which serves as a kickoff to summer.
Not long ago, the Mountain Games’ early June weekend was considered a dud. But as the festival grew, marketing types rebranded that time of year as the “shoulder season.”
Now, the four-day festival — with paddling, slacklining, running, climbing and bike events — ranks as one of Vail’s busiest weekends, with tens of thousands of visitors packing the valley and setting the pace for the warm-weather tourism season.
“We are looking to duplicate that business model in the early-winter season,” said Mike Imhof, the chief of the Vail Valley Foundation, which owns the Mountain Games. “We have an opportunity here, during a flexible time of year in our community, to create an event that offers culture, nightlife, sport and business networking opportunities.”
The festival debut will be a soft launch — with events only at Beaver Creek.
The foundation will then gather community thoughts on how the festival could grow valleywide, perhaps spanning eight to 10 days from the end of Thanksgiving through the Birds of Prey races, Imhof said.
This year, the foundation will install its largest-ever grandstands — free to the public — at the finish of the menacing Birds of Prey race course. A new VIP and “club-level” ticket, priced at $120 and available to everyone, will provide access previously reserved for racing insiders.
The foundation also is peddling the idea that ski industry leaders — retail and gear executives, foundations and legislators — can use the festival as a gathering point for meetings, Imhof said.
The Vail Valley Foundation’s new festival plan includes integrating some of the beloved events of the American Ski Classic, including the celebrity and ski legend races under the lights at Vail Mountain and the international ski hall of fame ceremony.
The American Ski Classic, which began as the Ford Cup in 1982, was canceled last year to avoid overlap with the 2015 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in February.
The hope is that the larger, Olympics-like festival will foster the same everyman appeal of the ski classic as well as the energy of the world ski championships.
“At the 2015 world championships, we saw a huge wave of enthusiasm and passion for ski racing and alpine sports with a festive atmosphere surrounding the celebration of top athletes,” U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association president Tiger Shaw said in a statement.
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374, jblevins@denverpost.com or @jasonblevins
