Vail/Beaver Creek announces special plans for 2009 world championship bid

Vail/Beaver Creek announces special plans for 2009 world championship bid{mosimage}Vail/Beaver Creek is hoping that its bid to host alpine, freestyle and snowboarding championships simultaneously will appeal to the FIS Council this summer, when that group meets to vote for a host venue. Three other areas are in the bidding contest: Schladming, Austria; Garmisch, Germany; and Val d’Isere, France. But each of those are each campaigning to host only alpine events. The vote will be made on June 3rd, at the FIS Congress in Miami, Florida.

‘We went to the 2002 Olympics’ said Ciel Folz, the president of the Vail/Beaver Creek’s campaign. ‘And we realized how those three sports could bring so much to each other that they’re not getting on their own.’ Folz made the announcement at in a press conference on Friday at the World Cup Finals in Sestriere, Italy.

Folz also pledged to pay for the travel and housing costs of the athletes attending the event, an unprecedented offer that could mean paying for plane tickets and accommodations for 1300-1400 people. ‘There are tremendous financial challenges for [some] countries to send their three teams to North America’ said John Garnsey, of Beaver Creek resort. Garnsey said the offer to host the teams was ‘an effort to neutralize that financial impact.’

The ‘triple championships’ announcement came after Vail/Beaver Creek’s bid committee made a special request of the FIS Council to move up the bidding timeframe for snowboard and freestyle by two years, from 2006 to 2004. ‘We already feel that we’ve provided a benefit to snowboarding and freestyle’ said Folz. ‘Snowboard and freestyle now have two candidates bidding for 2009.’