Training alongside stars fires up junior racers

 Nothing, not even perfect training conditions, provides the same wave of inspiration for young race teams at Copper Mountain like watching Hermann Maier fly by.
    As one of just a few areas in the Northern Hemisphere open for on-snow training this time of year, Copper Mountain is hosting more than 80 national and junior race teams this month.
    Although the training hill at Copper is a busy place, teams don’t mind sharing, especially when it means their chance to charge around the same gates as say, the mighty Austrian men’s team, which arrived for training at Copper on Saturday.

NOTHING, NOT EVEN PERFECT training conditions, provides the same wave of inspiration for young race teams at Copper Mountain like watching Hermann Maier fly by.
    As one of just a few areas in the Northern Hemisphere open for on-snow training this time of year, Copper Mountain is hosting more than 80 national and junior race teams this month.
    Although the training hill at Copper is a busy place, teams don’t mind sharing, especially when it means their chance to charge around the same gates as say, the mighty Austrian men’s team, which arrived for training at Copper on Saturday.
    “We went up and watched and videoed them for a few runs,” said 16-year-old all-rounder Terra Moran who was skiing at Copper with the National Alpine Training Center from Calgary, Alberta. The Alberta team gave up its 6 a.m. training slot Saturday to hand it over to the Austrians as Moran and some of her team watched in awe.
    “It’s pretty sweet to watch them. It was really good for me,” Moran said. “We definitely look at their technique. It’s really neat to see them on the same hill we’re training on, so we can’t use an excuse like, ‘Oh, their hill is different, their course is easier…”
    When asked for the first thing that struck her about the Austrians (among them Maier and Walchhofer, with Benjamin Raich expected on Monday), Moran said, “They’re amazing … And they’re huge.”
    A top-to-bottom speed course is set on Copper’s Main Vein trail for early morning training before the public arrives for lift opening (at 8:30 a.m. on weekends and 9 a.m. on weekdays), and slalom and giant slalom courses are set on the ski area’s Copperopolis, located higher up on the mountain at almost 12,000 feet.
    “There are a lot of teams here, but this early in the season, I never thought the snow would be this good,” said Liseanne Nelson from Craigleith Ski Club in Ontario.
    With the U.S. speed teams training in the mornings at Copper and with alpine, freestyle and alpine snowboard teams sharing gates and freeskiing at all hours of the day, the mountain is a mecca of race tights and quality carving.
    “There’s breaks in the crowd, so even though there’s a lot of people and teams here, we’re getting some good freeskiing in, too,” said L.G. Lubow of Okema Mountain School in Vermont. “I’ve seen like 20 teams from back East and the Austrian team and the U.S. Team. It’s pretty cool to just see them skiing around.”
    With more national teams on the radar to train at Copper for the remainder of the month, Copper race director Jeff White said that while he’s had a lot to juggle, the presence of the national teams has provided invaluable inspiration for the younger club racers.
    “There really is the excitement among the junior teams knowing they’re training on the same hill as the Olympic gold medalists and the best skiers in the world,” White said. “They can see Hermann or Bode or Michael and these kids can go out at any time and train against the same course. It has really elevated their level of skiing and given them something to feed off of.”