SKIING : World Cup Gets Off Ground on Artificial Snow
“The White Circus” opens today in Park City, Utah, where there’s just enough man-made white stuff to get ski racing’s four-month World Cup winter odyssey off the otherwise brown ground.
After three weeks of intensive snow-making, the courses are ready for Marc Girardelli of Luxembourg and Vreni Schneider of Switzerland to resume defense of their championships. The 1989-90 season opened last August in Australia, where Ole Christian Furuseth of Norway took the men’s lead with 40 points, and in Argentina, where Michaela Gerg of West Germany jumped out in front of the other women with 31.
Girardelli, hoping to equal Italian Gustavo Thoeni’s record of four overall titles, is fourth with 23 points, and Pirmin Zurbriggen of Switzerland, also going for his fourth, is sixth with 19. Schneider, who won a record 14 World Cup races last season, is 19th among the women with three.
Missing from this weekend’s competition--as well as the rest of the schedule--is former World Cup champion Tamara McKinney of the United States, who injured her left knee during glacier training at Saas Fe, Switzerland, on Oct. 18, two days after her 27th birthday.
McKinney, who won the combined gold medal in the World Alpine Ski Championships last February at Vail, Colo., underwent a five-hour operation at South Lake Tahoe late last month, after which Dr. Richard Steadman said: “Although as knee injuries go, this is a real serious one, everything went together well, and I’m encouraged. We’re going to take it one step at a time, but her season has definitely ended.”
The schedule at Park City, which will be one of the Alpine venues if Salt Lake City’s bid for the 1998 Winter Olympics is successful, calls for the men’s giant slalom today, followed by the women’s giant slalom Friday, the women’s slalom Saturday and the men’s slalom Sunday.
The men will move to Waterville Valley, N.H., for a giant slalom next Wednesday, then to Mont Sainte Anne, Quebec, for a slalom and giant slalom Dec. 2-3, before flying off to Europe.
The women will make three other North American stops--at Vail for a giant slalom and super-G Dec. 2-3; at Steamboat, Colo., for a downhill, slalom and combined Dec. 9-10, and at Panorama, B.C., for two downhills Dec. 16-17.
Skiing Notes
If you’ve been planning to ski over the Thanksgiving holidays, forget it. Mammoth Mountain has one to two feet of snow with just a few of its lifts operating, and two resorts are open near Lake Tahoe--Boreal and Alpine Meadows--but they’re also offering only extremely limited skiing. . . . Utah isn’t much better off, with Brighton the lone ski area definitely going. . . . Colorado lists A-Basin, Aspen Mountain, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Copper Mountain, Crested Butte, Keystone, Loveland, Steamboat, Telluride, Vail and Winter Park as partially operational.