Vancouver weather on minds of Olympians at Winter X Games

Snowing in the morning, snowing in the afternoon . . . and, most likely, snowing in the evening in the Aspen area on Wednesday.

Ah, if only Vancouver had such problems.

Here, on the eve of ESPN’s Winter X Games, the snow, or lack thereof in Vancouver, was an issue among the newly minted Olympians with an eye fixed on Cypress Mountain. That happens to be the venue for snowboarding and freestyle skiing events for the fast-approaching Olympics.

Generally a good thing to have the snow in snowboarding, isn’t it?

“That’s a little scary to me,” said Lindsey Jacobellis, an Olympic silver medalist in snowboard cross in 2006. “Because I really enjoy a big course like this [in Aspen] because I think it plays to my advantage. I love getting a lot of air. I love going so fast. So I hope that everything works out, and I’m sure they are working as hard as they possibly can.”

Olympian Chris Klug, who was moderating the formal part of the pre-event news conference, brought up the weather issue when he was introducing snowboarder Louie Vito, another Olympian.

“No comment,” said Vito, with a wry smile.

Said Klug: “They’re dirt walls, so I’ll go ahead and say it.”

Officials have been hard at work attacking the issue in British Columbia once the warm and rainy weather hit in January, closing down the ski resort alpine runs at Cypress Mountain to the public.

Snow is being imported from higher elevations, and British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell and John Furlong, the chief executive for the Vancouver Organizing Committee, viewed the venue on Wednesday during a helicopter tour. There will be a media update today in Vancouver at the VANOC headquarters, providing details of the “ongoing snow harvesting.”

Just blame it on El Nino.

Olympian Gretchen Bleiler, a silver medalist in the halfpipe in 2006, said, at the very least, all things would be equal for the competitors at Cypress Mountain.

“What can we do? Everyone is in the exact same boat,” she said. “The conditions are what they are. We all need to start being more sustainable, so we don’t have this climate change thing going on.

“I think that’s the main problem there. We all have to deal with the same thing.”

Snowboarders, generally, are not going to be stressed out over much. Kelly Clark, who will be competing in her third Olympics, was not the exception.

“Right now I’ve only heard rumors and I don’t have any sound information on what is exactly going on there,” she said. “They always put together a good pipe for the Olympics, so I’m hoping that will be the case.”

Said Vito: “I’m not worried. It’s the Olympics. They’re gonna figure out some way to make it work.”

The head of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Assn., Peter Judge, told the Associated Press that Olympic officials were “kind of in crisis mode.”

But those who have spent time in temperate Vancouver in the winter are saying this snow crisis shouldn’t come as a great surprise.

“I think when they decided [to go to] Vancouver, you have some history there with weather,” Bleiler said. “But it’s an amazing city. When it’s good, it’s really good. When it’s bad, it’s really bad. “

She laughed, adding: “And right now it just happens to be really bad. But I feel like magic happens around the Olympics. . . . I have no doubt that this is going to turn out well.”

lisa.dillman@latimes.com

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