TOP FIVE FRIDAYS: OCTOBER 18, 2019
#1: A Notable Week for the First Ladies of Women's Ski Racing:
A familiar pose for Mikaela Shiffrin. Image: Mikaela Shiffrin on Facebook
At the top of this week’s news is a duo of announcements that celebrate the achievements of the top two female ski racers in recent memory: Mikaela Shiffrin and Lindsey Vonn. For the sake of simplicity and alliteration, let’s start with Shiffrin. This week, it was announced that Mikaela Shiffrin has been nominated to win the Team USA, Female Olympic Athlete of the Year award. While it may seem like she’s a shoe-in to win given her dominate performance on the FIS circuit last season, it’s worth considering the company she’s keeping as a nominee. Also up for the award is Simone Biles, who, if you somehow aren’t familiar with, is essentially the Mikaela Shiffrin of the gymnastics world. Case in point: just about a week ago Biles set the record for the most medals ever by a gymnast at the World Championships. In other words, this may be one of the hardest contests Shiffrin’s been in recently. If you’d like to help her chances, you can cast a vote for her here. Fan votes will ultimately make up 50% of Shiffrin’s final score in the award process.
In other news, Lindsey Vonn also has an award to celebrate this week as it’s just been announced that she will be inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame, Class of 2020. While Vonn was born and raised in Minnesota and spent her formative years skiing at Buck Hill, it wouldn’t be a stretch to consider Vail her second home as she visited the mountain with her family often enough that she eventually began taking lessons at Ski Club Vail. As such, the award seems fitting as the state played a significant role in the development of the most winning female ski racer of all time. Joining Vonn in the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame, Class of 2020 are other state legends, such as Bob Gebhard who was the first GM of the rockies, two time Olympic Gold Medal winner Alonzo Cabers, George Gwozdecky, Terry Miller, and Erin Popovich. To learn more about Vonn’s induction, as well as her classmates, check out the recap from CBS Local News Denver.
#2: Freeride World Tour 2020 Official Athlete Roster Announced:
Next up in ski news, is a follow up to an update we shared a few weeks ago, in which we shared the newly announced Freeride World Tour 2020 schedule and promised to check back in when the official athlete lineup was announced. Well, as luck would have it, that happened this week! As you might recall, this year’s tour schedule looks very similar to last year’s with the only change being a swapping of dates between the Ordino Arcalis and Fieberbrunn dates. On the roster side of things however, there are a few more significant changes. First and foremost, on the men’s side, Markus Eder has elected to sit this season out after winning the Freeride World Tour last season. As such, the door’s been left wide open for the rest of the field to battle it out for first. Another highlight of the men’s roster is the return of Tanner Hall. After a strong start to the tour last year, Tanner failed to reclaim a podium spot and didn’t attend the championship event in Verbier, leading some to speculate that his participation in the event was a one time occurrence. Fortunately for fans of Tanner Hall, freeskiing, and even the progression of freeride skiing, that’s not the case.
On the women’s side of things, there’s an equal amount of excitement. Returning to the tour this year is 2-time reigning champ Arianna Tricomi, who is looking to secure her third consecutive overall FWT title. Joining her for another round of FWT are Jacqueline Pollard (USA), Elisabeth Gerritzen (SUI), Hedvig Wessel (NOR), and Jackie Paaso (USA). In addition to these five women who have already experienced the tour, there are four wildcard entries and two rookies, meaning the proverbial deck has been shuffled and there are presumably a lot of hungry athletes eager to dethrone Tricomi. With that stage set, it feels relatively safe to suggest that the women’s division could be the one to watch this season. To see the complete list of athletes for Men’s, Women’s, Ski, and Snowboard divisions, check out the official update from the Freeride World Tour!
#3: Vail Releases Second Annual Epic Promise Progress Report:
Vail skiers can rest easy, knowing that their ski experience is coming at dwindling cost to the environment. Image: Vail Resort on Facebook
These days in ski news, we’re seeing a constant stream of climate change related headlines. From ski industry leaders converging to discuss the impact of skiing on climate change, to power plants offering a zero carbon skiing experience, the topic is finding its way into multiple headlines on a weekly basis, and for good reason. This week continues that trend as Vail has just shared its second annual EpicPromise Progress Report. For those unaware, a quick recap: back in the summer of 2017, Vail announced that they were launching an initiative to convert their entire enterprise into a zero footprint business. In other words, their goal is to negate the environmental impact of their business, including all 37 of their resorts. It goes without saying that this is a monumental task.
Despite being such a lofty goal, Vail continues to make solid progress towards reaching it, as exhibited by this week’s second progress report. While the entire document is available to review, Vail itself has a done a nice job of summarizing some of the key points for ease of consumption. Amongst the highlights of this year’s report are the facts that Vail diverted 11 million pounds of waste from landfills last year, and decreased energy consumption by 37,511 MMBtu. While that number may not mean a whole lot to non-energy experts (such as ourselves), the key point to take away from that second achievement is that it puts the company at 25% towards its energy-efficiency goal. Additionally, Vail also made significant charitable contributions las year, including $14 million to 350 different non-profits, as well as a total of $1 million towards the EpicPriomise Employee Foundation. All told, there are plenty of other figures to look at from this year’s progress report, but one bottom line worth considering is the fact that, while traditionalists may hate the idea of resort consolidation, Vail continues to prove itself as a steward of culture and a company with solid morals to stand on. To read the full report, click here.
#4: From Slalom Skiing to Powder Skirts: An Olympian’s First Time in the Backcountry:
Despite having no backcountry experience, Erin Mielzynski's ski racing background was more than enough for her to thrive on a recent expedition with Warren Miller Entertainment. Image: Erin Mielzynski on Facebook
Lastly, we round out this week’s news in our favorite fashion: highlighting an excellent skiing story. This week on SkiRacing.com, we caught a super interesting article that shares a behind the scenes style story of Canadian ski racer Erin Mielzynski’s first time backcountry skiing. Here at SkiEssentials, we’re big fans of all types of skiing, from freestyle to racing and backcountry, so for us, the premise of this story was immediately intriguing. We don’t want to dive in too deep to this one because it’s a well written piece that deserves a full read, but the premise is basically this: despite being an Olympic athlete and the first Canadian ski racer to win a World Cup event in 41 years (which is a very surprising statistic), Erin Mielzynski had never gone backcountry skiing. That is, until she received a call from Warren Miller Entertainment who wanted to send her on a trip to Chamonix where she’d explore the backcountry alongside ski racer Mattias Hargin, racer and freerider Marcus Caston, and freerider Aurelien Ducroz. To be sure, the crew was a bit of a mixed bag, both in respect to specialties and nationalities. As it turns out though, that was just what the team from Warren Miller was looking for. In an effort to prove that all types of skiers share the same core attachments to the sport, the film company put together an unlikely bunch of skiers, set them loose in Chamonix, and watched as they all bonded together, picking up tips and tricks derived from each one’s unique backgrounds. Again, we’re not going to be able to do the full story justice here, but if you’re looking for a quality read that highlights the innate bond that exists between skiers, we highly recommend giving the article from SkiRacing.com a read!