The Ski Tour aims to amp up American ski culture

With the possibility of ski racing disappearing from the American public’s viewing access, a few fans of the sport thought they’d make a new wave.
    Kipp Nelson, Steve Brown and some ski buddies in Sun Valley, Idaho, were considering relaunching the Pro Tour, the now-defunct series of dual giant slalom events in North America that featured the best racers in the world. Then skiercross racers and fellow Sun Valley residents Zach and Reggie Crist persuaded the group to try something a little more modern.
    And The Ski Tour was born.
    The Ski Tour is a set of four events featuring men’s skiercross and skier halfpipe competition, kicking off in Sun Valley, Jan. 11-14, 2007.
WITH THE POSSIBILITY of ski racing disappearing from the American public’s viewing access, a few fans of the sport thought they’d make a new wave.
    Kipp Nelson, Steve Brown and some ski buddies in Sun Valley, Idaho, were considering relaunching the Pro Tour, the now-defunct series of dual giant slalom events in North America that featured the best racers in the world. Then skiercross racers and fellow Sun Valley residents Zach and Reggie Crist persuaded the group to try something a little more modern.
    And The Ski Tour was born.
    The Ski Tour is a set of four events featuring men’s skiercross and skier halfpipe competition, kicking off in Sun Valley, Jan. 11-14, 2007.
    “We originally decided on the dual GS. We could watch it from top to bottom, it was exciting,” Brown said. “Zach convinced us we should think about doing a halfpipe event as well. We thought about it and it made sense. Then, when FIS voted to put skiercross in the [2010] Olympics, we decided to drop the dual GS. It’s a very exciting format. And you never know, it’s still four years away … maybe we can get skier halfpipe in the Olympics, too.”
Athletes who have signed on to the tour include the Crist brothers, Daron Rahlves and Casey Puckett for skiercross, plus Tanner Hall and Simon Dumont for pipe competition.
    In addition to rounding up the world’s best athletes for the competitions, The Ski Tour’s aim is to create a lively scene, with concerts at each venue, plus an overall prize purse amounting to $500,000. Each event will also get an hour of prime airtime on ABC.
    “We feel like it’s time we make it part of the winter scene here on our home turf,” Brown said. “One big thing about The Ski Tour is to make it a cultural event. It’s really about the skiing lifestyle.”
    Of course, every cultural event needs a centerpiece, and as events such as the X Games can attest, fans will come from far and wide to appreciate the scene when there’s good entertainment and good competition to watch.
    “The basic objective has been to come up with a couple of ski competitions to rally around that would help fans come together,” Nelson said. “A lot of times, when you look at the sport, it suffers a bit from being fragmented — so many types of competitions, so many types of skiers. Taking the skiercross, which represents the ski racing side, and halfpipe that represents the freeskiing side, we’re not saying that’s all there is, but we’re bringing the fan base to rally around those.”
    Traditionally, alpine racers and pipe skiers have not always gotten along, as was clear in 2004 when Hall made public statements suggesting that running gates was something easy that anyone could do and Rahlves, in return, offered up his 190s for Hall to attempt the Hahnenkamm downhill in Kitzbühel, Austria. The confrontation faded, but the friction remains.
    The Ski Tour organizers acknowledge that skiercross athletes, who hail largely from the world of professional alpine racing, and freeskiers don’t always see eye to eye, but he perceives this as only another enticing component of the tour.
    “Those guys are both incredible athletes,” Nelson said of skiercross and halfpipe competitors. “I suspect that if they watch the other, they’ll be amazed and have a lot of respect. Besides, the rivalry is kind of fun. Down the road, maybe there will be someone who can do both. Having a tour that does both, if you have a 13-year-old who can do both, he can.”
    Many retired World Cup racers turn to skiercross not just as an outlet for their highly refined skills, but also because it offers a more relaxed, yet more adrenaline-fueled post-career activity.
    “This is more of a fun thing to do,” Puckett said. “I probably have more fun doing skiercross than I did ski racing, but I was more passionate about ski racing. Skiercross probably is more exciting to watch with the courses and all the big air, the format, with other guys and the excitement of the start, it’s like horse racing. You’re in the gate. You don’t know when the gate’s going to open. There’s just a lot of adrenaline and a lot of action.”
    Following the Sun Valley event, The Ski Tour stops in Colorado, hitting Breckenridge Feb. 1-4 and Aspen-Snowmass Feb. 22-25, before wrapping up in Squaw Valley, California, March 8-11.