SKIING / BOB LOCHNER : Senior Racers Have a Tour of Their Own
It’s not exactly on the scale of golf’s Senior PGA Tour, but ski racing will have its own mini-tour for the sport’s old-timers this season, offering a total purse of $150,000.
The Tournament of Champions begins at Steamboat Springs, Colo., this weekend, continues at Deer Valley, Utah, Dec. 7-8, then winds up at Heavenly Valley, on Lake Tahoe’s South Shore, Jan. 4-5, with fields of eight men and eight women competing at each location.
Stein Eriksen, 65, the 1952 Norwegian Olympic star who is now director of skiing at Deer Valley, indicated that he will make each stop.
“I haven’t raced in years, but because there’ll be a handicapping system that should prevent sandbagging, I decided to enter,” he said last weekend while in Los Angeles. “I still have some pep left.”
Other entrants are Bill Johnson, Franz Klammer, Billy Kidd, Hans Hinterseer and Hank Kashiwa, among the men, and Debbie Armstrong, Christin Cooper, Cindy Nelson, Michela Figini and Kiki Cutter, among the women.
The West is blanketed in white this Thanksgiving weekend, meaning skiers can go just about anywhere and find a slope to slide on.
In the Southland, Bear Mountain and Snow Summit are the only operational ski areas at the moment, but Snow Valley may have reopened. Its telephone report, at (714) 867-5151, will have the final word.
A storm was predicted for the Sierra, where Heavenly Valley opened Wednesday--joining Mammoth Mountain, Kirkwood, Alpine Meadows, Squaw Valley, Sugar Bowl, Boreal, Donner Ski Ranch and Mt. Rose. Heavenly reported 24 to 36 inches of natural and machine-made snow on its upper California side, with seven lifts running.
Elsewhere, just about every major resort is open for the first big weekend of the season, from Whistler-Blackcomb in British Columbia, to Taos Ski Valley in New Mexico. Between, skiers can choose from the likes of Mt. Bachelor in Oregon, Big Mountain and Big Sky in Montana, Sun Valley in Idaho, Snowbird and Brian Head in Utah, and you name it in Colorado.
World Cup racing is in full swing this weekend.
Alberto Tomba of Italy will try to duplicate his sweep at Park City, Utah, when he takes on four-time overall champion Marc Girardelli of Luxembourg and the rest of the men in a giant slalom and slalom today and Saturday at Breckenridge, Colo. ESPN will televise the action at 2:30 p.m. today and noon Saturday.
The women will launch their season with a super-G and slalom at Piancavallo, Italy, where a strong showing is expected from the U.S. racers, among them Julie Parisien, Eva Twardokens, Kristi Terzian and newly married Diann Roffe-Steinrotter.
Skiing Notes
The three finalists for the 10th annual AT&T; Skiing Award, given to “an individual whose commitment to excellence and dedication to skiing has profoundly enriched the sport,” are Dave McCoy, founder of Mammoth Mountain; Doug Pfeiffer of Big Bear Lake, who was instrumental in organizing both the Professional Ski Instructors of America and the sport of freestyle skiing, and Diana Golden, who won the gold medal in disabled skiing at Calgary, where the event was demonstrated in 1988. . . . Former U.S. ski team members Felix McGrath and Tiger Shaw have joined the U.S. Pro Tour, which gets under way Dec. 6-8 at Alpine Meadows. . . . Leroy (Rusty) Rust, 71, of Yosemite received the 1991 Charley Proctor Award earlier this month in San Francisco from the North American Ski Journalists Assn./West. He was cited for his 42 years as one of the nation’s top ski coaches.