SKIING / CHRIS DUFRESNE : Lack of Snow Is Leaving Some Resort Owners Out in the Cold
Hey kids, anyone for some dirt-boarding?
It’s approaching mid-January, yet dirt is still the only skiable surface at some local resorts. At Big Air Green Valley near Running Springs, proprietor Eric Schwartz is running out of patience as he awaits the coming of winter.
“I just finished building a judges’ stand for an event that we’re not going to have Sunday,” he said.
The snowboarding-only area opened for a week in December but has been closed since.
“It’s bleak, I’m very depressed,” Schwartz said.
Such is life without snow-making.
Areas that have been able to make enough of their own snow are surviving what has so far been a dry winter.
In fact, one ski insider said this week the best skiing in California right now might be at the three Big Bear resorts, which have taken advantage of technology and cool temperatures.
So much for the good news. Mt. Waterman and Krakta Ridge have yet to open. Ski Sunrise in Wrightwood opened in December, but is closed again because of lack of snow.
Mt. Baldy closed Wednesday because of strong winds, but hopes to reopen later in the week.
“That’s Southern California,” Schwartz said. “Part of you gets upset. I’ve thought of sacrificing virgins, but that doesn’t work. I had high hopes, but we still have two months left.”
Schwartz said he had plans to invest in a snow-maker, at a cost of $500,000 after this season.
“I was taking a chance,” he said. “I was hoping this would be a good year.”
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As the World (Cup) turns . . .
What is it with the International Ski Federation (FIS), the sport’s alleged governing body? Las Vegas should lays odds as to when these Euro-crats will next do something right.
Another week, another FIS controversy.
Every nation involved in last Saturday’s super-giant slalom at Altenmarkt, Austria--with the exception of Austria and Switzerland--was expected to officially protest the outcome of the race, which was at first halted after 32 racers because of slick course conditions that caused 26 skiers to crash in a frozen finish area.
Norway’s Astrid Loedemel was seriously injured on the course, and Megan Gerety of the United States wiped out a television crew when she crashed.
Loedemel, the top woman with a medal hope in her home country Olympics next month, tore right knee ligaments and will require surgery, ending this year’s Olympic dream.
Yet, after protestations from the Swiss, who had at stake the race’s leader, Heidi Zurbriggen, FIS later deemed the Altenmarkt results official.
Rules? According to World Cup bylaws, an abandoned race doesn’t count if fewer than half the field has completed the course. Eighty-five racers entered the Altenmarkt super-G. Only 32 finished.
Either FIS chucked the rule book or invented an interesting new math.
You’ll recall, this is the same FIS outfit that stripped the United States’ AJ Kitt of a World Cup downhill victory last year at Aspen when it canceled the race because of a small hole on the course created--skiers maintained--by FIS course designers.
U.S. ski team officials are hoarse from screaming about the FIS’ double standards and now can add Altenmarkt to their files.
“If we organized a race like this in the U.S., they (FIS) would have our heads,” U.S. Alpine Coach Paul Major said after Altenmarkt. “It was an embarrassment.”
Major maintains the race should have never been run, even though the United States ended up with an an eighth-place finisher who desperately needed the result: Diann Roffe-Steinrotter.
The protests, we boldly predict, will fall on deaf ears at FIS.
Still, Major will tell you, it feels good to scream.
Skiing, the dangerous sport.
FIS, its dangerous leader.
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The U.S. Alpine team’s tough-stance Olympic qualifying criteria have served as a wake-up call to two U.S. veterans who, at least on paper, were in jeopardy of not qualifying for the Olypmic team, to be announced Feb. 7.
Julie Parisien and Roffe-Steinrotter, two former Olympians who had not yet met the U.S. team’s self-imposed guidelines, responded with top-10 finishes last week.
Parisien was eighth at the Altenmarkt slalom, her best finish of the season.
Roffe-Steinrotter, the 1992 Olympic silver medalist in giant slalom, finished eighth in a Saturday’s controversial super-G.
After nearly two years in the skiing doldrums, Roffe-Steinrotter appears to be at last gaining momentum, having finished 13th in a giant slalom at Morzine, France, the week before.
“Diann seems to be getting a little more fire, which is what she needs.” Major said last week. “She’s getting a little more ornery every day, and that’s what I want to see. The more difficult she is to be around, the better she is.”
With the top-10 finishes, Parisien and Roffe-Steinrotter each have three top 15 finishes this season, enough to qualify based on the Olympic criteria.
Ski Notes
Donna Weinbrecht, Olympic freestyle moguls champion, continued her impressive comeback from a knee injury by winning her third World Cup event of the season last weekend at Blackcomb, British Columbia. Weinbrecht, 28, from West Milford, N.J., missed all of last season after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee during training in November of 1992. The victory at Blackcomb was the 27th World Cup victory for Weinbrecht, who shows no signs of rust as she prepares to defend her Olympic championship at Lillehammer, Norway, next month.
In one of her last tuneups before the Olympics, Weinbrecht will compete Saturday in the Alamo Freestyle Classic at Breckenridge, Colo. It was at Breckenridge in 1992 that Weinbrecht injured her right knee in training while trying to complete jump called a Daffy Twister. . . . World Cup freestyle champion Trace Worthington, who injured his right knee in training last week, said he plans to be back in time for the Olympics. Tests revealed only a partial tear in the medial collateral ligament. The U.S. freestyle team will be selected after the Subaru Freestyle International at Lake Placid, N.Y., Jan. 20-23.
Here’s the glimmer of hope for the U.S. technical team. After spending two weeks training at home in Park City, Jeremy Nobis rejoined the team in Europe and missed the top-30 first-run cut by .05 seconds at a GS last week at Kranjsk Gora, Slovenia. . . . The United States’ Doug Lewis defeated 11 racing greats last Sunday at Aspen to win the first King of the Mountain downhill race. Lewis, whose time was 2 minutes 4.06 seconds, picked up $25,000 for the victory. Lewis, a member of the U.S. ski team from 1980-88, won the bronze medal in the 1985 championships in Bormio, Italy, and was the U.S. national downhill champion in 1986 and 1987.
Conradin Cathomen of Switzerland finished second, with race organizer Bill Johnson, the former American Olympic gold medalist, finishing third.
