Rocky Mountain Sigh: Copper Speed Center will be late

By Published On: October 31st, 2014Comments Off on Rocky Mountain Sigh: Copper Speed Center will be late
A look at the Speed Center at Copper Mountain on Thursday.

A look at the U.S. Ski Team’s Speed Center at Copper Mountain on Thursday. Geoff Mintz/SR

With temperatures creeping up into the 60s in Colorado on Thursday, snow guns took the day off.

The second half of October in the High Country has been unusually warm and dry, forcing the U.S. Ski Team to rethink its plans for the Speed Center at Copper Mountain, which the last two seasons has been top-to-bottom operational by Nov. 1.

Since 2011, the Americans and their international guests have been utilizing all of the Speed Center’s 2,300 vertical feet — unprecedented for the month of November — to better prepare for early season speed events in Lake Louise and Beaver Creek. USSA has stated all along the goal of the multi-million dollar project is to deliver full-length downhill and super G training by Nov. 1.

The Rockies are known as one of the most weather-consistent mountain ranges in the world. But Mother Nature can still be uncooperative, and the U.S. Ski Team was aware of those circumstances when it initiated the project, says Men’s Head Coach Sasha Rearick.

“We knew going into this project that one out of every seven or eight years, we are going to run into issues on the front side of the month,” said Rearick. “We’ve been really lucky the last couple years — Nov. 1, we’re running full length. Last year, we were even talking about doing some stuff in late October, so we were probably getting a little too bullish in terms of our confidence with the whole thing. I think this is a really good reality check.”

In the inaugural season, warm weather and first-year operational quirks held things up through Nov. 10. Then in 2012 and 2013, the Speed Center went off without a hitch. This season, the latest best-case scenario for top-to-bottom training is Nov. 15.

Part of the Bill Marolt legacy, the collaboration with Copper was first broached in 2005, but just as the two sides were making progress on a plan, the recession hit and the project was shelved. After Intrawest sold the resort to Powder Corp., the parties were able to come to an agreement.

Vail's Golden Peak in progress Thursday. Geoff Mintz/SR

Vail’s Golden Peak in progress Thursday. Geoff Mintz/SR

Vail’s Golden Peak, 20 minutes or so down the road, is also in the mix this time of year, expected to host tech training for national team athletes. Unfortunately, the weather hasn’t been any better on the other side of the pass. While snowmaking efforts are currently underway, estimates on the ground have the venue up and running no earlier than the second week of the month, at best.

Meanwhile, the U.S. coaching staff is left to create a plan for this current season under these circumstances. While full-length downhill training at Copper may still be a half-month away, all is not lost. The upper part of the mountain will continue to provide limited training, as it did in the pre-Speed Center days.

The tech team, including Nolan Kasper and David Chodounsky, has already been making use of the Copperopolis trail on the top part of the mountain, preparing for the Levi slalom opener on Nov. 17.

Most of the speed team will begin training on Nov. 5 with ski testing and glide turns on the upper part of the mountain. The modified program will not place the guys as far along in the pre-season progression as the coaches would have liked — but they will be on snow.

Over the summer, the speed team opted for technical training in New Zealand, which Rearick insists was still the right move. In September, with weather challenges in Chile, the athletes did not land quite as many speed days as they had planned. Instead, they had hoped for a really solid block in November.

“Copper is going to continue to make snow, and as they progress, we’ll be able to ski farther and farther down the downhill trail,” said Rearick. “The first thing we need to evaluate is are we getting enough speed days in with our elite teams prior to the season? When we finally do run full length, if we have good weather days 15 through 21, then we’re going to be in a good place. If we run into bad weather those days, then we’re definitely low on our volume.

“The first 10 days of this camp, we’re going to slow the progression down — take a step back, really go back to the fundamentals of glide turns and ski testing. We’re going to go back and do more technical work and super G. Hopefully, we can run super G in Vail. And then, as soon as we can run the downhill course, we’re going to flip the switch pretty hard and go full gas.”

Once the Speed Center is fully functional, hopefully on the 15th, time on the hill will be shared between the American men and women. However, citing the fact that the men have a speed race one week earlier than the women, the international men will receive priority over the international women during that first week. The situation has left some European speed teams — who planned to arrive as early as next week — scrambling to decide if they will delay their travel to North America and seek training elsewhere in the meantime.

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About the Author: Geoff Mintz

Geoff Mintz is a former alpine ski racer who cut his teeth at Ragged Mountain and Waterville Valley, N.H. After graduating from Holderness and UVM, he relocated to Colorado, where he worked on the hill prior to pursuing a career in journalism. Mintz served as associate editor for Ski Racing Media from 2011 to 2015. He later reconnected with his local roots to manage all marketing and communications for Ski & Snowboard Club Vail before resuming work at SRM as editor-in-chief.