TOP FIVE FRIDAYS: MARCH 31, 2023
Lead Image: It was a bittersweet week for athletes on the Freeride World Tour as champions were crowned after an unexpected ending to the season. More on that below! Image: Freeride World Tour on Facebook
#1: As Shiffrin Sets Another Record, the FIS’s Pay Equality Takes Center Stage:
With her $1.04 million in prize money this season, Shiffrin became the first FIS alpine skier to earn more than $1 million on the circuit in a singular year. Image: Mikaela Shiffrin on Facebook
Hello, and welcome to Top Five Fridays, the March 31, 2023 edition! If you thought we were done with World Cup coverage for the season, think again. Amidst all of last week’s commotion surrounding one Mikaela Shiffrin, we intentionally put off sharing one of her records until this week: the record for the most prize money ever earned in a season on the FIS World Cup circuit- male or female. This season, after all was said and done, Shiffrin took home 964,200 Swiss francs, or about $1.04 million USD. At the time of her final finish, Shiffrin became the first FIS alpine skier to ever break the $1 million prize money threshold. On the men’s side, Marco Odermatt was hot on her heels, earning himself $1.017 million USD. In addition to becoming the first alpine athlete to break the threshold, her $0.023 million lead on Marco Odermatt also gives Mikaela the current record for the most prize money earned in a single season by an FIS ski racer. To learn more about this accomplishment, check out the report from the Park Record.
We bring this news to the forefront of Top Five Fridays, not just to gossip about how much money Mikaela has, but to once again applaud the ski community, and in this case the FIS specifically, for leading the way on social issues. This time, we’re focusing on equal pay between genders, as the FIS has been one of the most evenly paying professional sports leagues for years now. While other sports like basketball and soccer are notorious for vastly underpaying female athletes, the FIS has been paying female competitors as much or more than their male counterparts. Don’t believe us? Look it up for yourself: out of the last 12 years (as far back as the FIS is sharing the data), male alpine racers only out-earned females in just 4 years, or about 33% of the time. Further delivering the point is the fact that two years ago, in 2021, each of the top three female athletes out-earned the highest paid male athlete. With that in mind, we applaud both the female athletes making these statistics happen, as well as the FIS for making it possible. As for what Shiffrin plans to do with all of her prize money? She plans on following the Warren Buffet technique. For more on that, check out the writeup from CNBC.com.
#2: 2023 Freeride World Tour Champions Crowned as Schedule Comes to an Unceremonious End Amidst Avalanche Danger:
Due to avalanche danger, the event staff at the Freeride World Tour had the unenviable task of cancelling the season's final stop.
In other news this week, we bring you the conclusion of the 2023 Freeride World Tour. At this time last week, we were filled to the brim with excitement and anticipation as the final stop of the Tour was scheduled to go down in a matter of hours on the legendary Bec de Rosses in Verbier, Switzerland. Unfortunately, that event never came to fruition. During the first few days of the weather window, snow and winds came down hard and heavy on the resort, with recorded gusts of up to 83 MPH. The result was severe avalanche conditions, with local avalanche services reporting danger to be 4 out of 5. As a result, on Tuesday morning, the last viable day to hold the competition, event organizers held their breaths as avalanche mitigation teams went out to bomb the mountain. Unfortunately, their efforts resulted in multiple avalanches on the venue, causing just about the entire surface to slide. Even in areas where it didn’t, the risk was apparent. With risky avalanche conditions and a venue full of debris snow, the final stop of this year’s tour was canceled for just the second time in Freeride World Tour history.
Despite not being able to run the final event, the week wasn’t a total bust though for the FWT. With the Verbier stop canceled, the standings following the 4th stop of the season were taken as the final results. As it so happens, this year’s first place winners all won the tour for their first time ever. On the ski side, Valentin Rainer took home the gold, fueled by his first place finish in Ordino Arcalís, while Olympic champion and decorated FIS mogul skier-turned freerider Justine Dufour-Lapointe took home the gold for the women. With the 2023 Freeride World Tour in the rearview, it’s officially time to look ahead to the future of the sport. As you know, the FIS bought the FWT back in December, much to the chagrin of those deeply involved in the sport. While there were no noticeable changes made this season, next year will be the first opportunity for the FIS to show us where they plan to take the Tour. While there are countless questions and concerns to voice on this front, the very first one we’re asking is, “will events continue to be livestreamed and available on YouTube?” Or will the World Tour fall victim to the FIS’s international broadcasting rights problem, making viewership difficult. Time will tell. Until then, check out the FWT’s coverage of the cancellation in Verbier here, as well as their coverage of this year’s winners, here.
#3: Mayflower and Deer Valley Continue Talks, Snowboard Ban at New Resort Highly Possible:
A birds-eye view putting the proximity of Mayflower Resort and Deer Valley in perspective. Swing by the Mayflower Resort’s Facebook page to see the full size image.
We’ll be honest, our fourth highlight this week also taps into competitive news, so before diving into that one, we want to offer a bit of reprieve for those of you who simply don’t care. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on who you ask, Utah’s newest ski resort, Mayflower, made headlines in a big way this week. If this name is new to you, here’s the lightning fast recap: a few years back, developers based out of New York City decided they want to develop a new ski resort that’s located on the backside of Deer Valley. As part of their pitch, Mayflower plans on providing discounted tickets and lodging to members of the military, in exchange for a number of benefits that will help them develop the resort. In addition to this angle, Mayflower has long been vocal about their desire to connect their terrain with Deer Valley, making it possible to ski and access both resorts. When we first reported on the concept back in October of 2020, the concept felt very one-sided, with Mayflower dreaming of connecting the two ski areas, and the high-brow Deer Valley seeming disinterested.
This week, we learned of two major developments in this story. First, talks between the two resorts are continuing to warm, as Deer Valley’s president and COO, Todd Bennett, pulled the curtain back at a ski industry panel in Park City late last week, shining some light on the status of the negotiations. During the panel itself, his comments were brief, acknowledging that the two resorts are in discussions that would include Deer Valley overseeing the mountain operations of Mayflower. Along with that statement came the second piece of highlight news: if Deer Valley takes on operational duties, their ban on snowboarding will apply to Mayflower terrain. In that room, at that moment, applause reportedly broke out. In the following week on the internet however, opinions have been much more diverse. As is always the case when a ski resort implements a ban on snowboarders, online forums lit up with cries of injustice. While that’s a whole debate in and of itself, the question we’re finding ourselves asking is, if Mayflower has been given the greenlight to develop in light of their partnership with the military, is a ban on snowboarding going to fly? Or will the backlash from snowboarding military members be too severe for the resort to overcome? If that’s the case, what happens to the dream of linking the two mountains, as well as Mayflower’s financial viability? For now, all we have are questions, but we have a feeling more answers are on the way. Until then, check out the latest report from the Park Record.
#4: Red Bull Announces New “Cascade” Event, a Park and Freeride Skiing Competition from the Brain of Bobby Brown:
You may have seen an edit last season that acted as a test run for the Cascade concept. Now, Red Bull and Bobby Brown are bringing the event to life. Image by Josh Conrad for the Red Bull Content Pool. Found via the Red Bull Website
Finally, we round out the week with news of a new competition that’s just downright cool. From the brain of Bobby Brown, get ready for Red Bull Cascade: a freeride / freestyle competition that asks skiers to throw down their best line on a two mile course that’s loaded with park features, bump runs, and more. In the announcement from Red Bull, which takes the form of a Q&A with Mr. Brown himself, we learn a lot of interesting details about the plans for the event, as well as why it’s been called into existence.
First, let’s talk about the event itself: aiming to bridge the gap between competition skiers, freeride skiers, and film skiers, the Red Bull Cascade is sort of like a slopestyle run without the structure of a fenced off course. In lieu of a series of chronological hits and features, athletes will be tasked with discovering all of the elements of the mountain playground that’s being presented to them, and piecing together a run that highlights their best abilities. Piggybacking off that idea is the competition’s format, which is a bracket style, head to head event. This format’s been growing in popularity in recent years, with Red Bull’s own Playsteets and Natural Selection events utilizing it, as well as the more grassroots competition series, SLVSH. By leveraging this format, Brown and his fellow event organizers hope to eliminate the “this trick is worth this many points” mentality that’s crept into freeskiing events, and instead give judges the ability to take an overall impression of each run, ultimately deciding which was better. In our experience, it also makes events super fun to watch as riders slowly have to elevate their game as they progress further into the bracket.
As for why it exists, Brown’s motivations are simple: as a competitive skier who’s found himself more involved in the film scene in recent years, he wants to create an event that highlights the abilities of both types of athlete while also putting them on even ground. For competition skiers, adjustments will have to be made in order to put together a full 2 mile run, complete with interesting use of terrain between the park jumps and rails. For film skiers and more freeride oriented skiers, making the mountain their playground while still needing to compete at a high level on park features should result in high levels of creativity and entertainment. With the event itself just three weeks away, we have to say, we’re extremely excited to have something like this to look forward to at the end of April. Until then, we recommend checking out the announcement from Red Bull to learn more.