World Cup brings crowd pleasing challenges to Palisades Tahoe for Team USA skiers
OLYMPIC VILLAGE -- River Radamus knows Palisades will throw at him.
"It's the kind of course where if you don't ski it, it's going to ski you," he said.
The 25-year-old Team USA ski racer is coming off a career-best finish at the World Championships in France and is excited about a return home. Most competitions in ski racing are done abroad in European destinations like Courchevel and France, and Kitzbuhel in Austria. It's only a few times a year when the Americans get to race on their home turf, but veteran course designer Phil Gilanfarr isn't going to make it easy on anyone.
"Very few courses on the World Cup have that many different pitch angles, plus we're getting into pretty steep angles like 58 percent on some areas of the course," he said.
"It's so steep, there's so much terrain in it," added Bill Hudson, the Palisades director of ski events.
He is a 1988 Olympian himself and said the science of crafting ski racing courses is a lot different than it used to be.
"They really put a lot of work into making this track unique," Radamus explained. "It's got a lot of sharp, insane terrain and it's going to be fun."
Course inspections and prep date back to the beginning of the season. As more snow accumulated, Gilanfarr and his crew figured out little tweaks and design flourishes that could make the course more challenging for racers. That means making some areas of the course steeper, planning gates at moments that require split-second decision making and, of course, a lot of ice. Ski races can't exist without an icy face, so Palisades officials have dumped more than 850,000 gallons of water -- an Olympic-sized swimming pool's worth -- on the course to get the consistency they want.
"We've been working for months actually preparing the course, especially in the last week," Hudson said. "We've been watering [it] to make a more dense, compact surface."
The course begins on the trail Champs-Elysses, before turning onto the steeps of Dog Leg and eventually opening into the areas between Dog Leg and Red Dog with the finish line right at the base area almost creating a stadium-like atmosphere.
"Everything's right here," Hudson said. "People can walk up and watch and that really creates an atmosphere that's pretty special. It's the incredible terrain and mountains we have not just for our guests to see but the best competitors in the world. This is why you do big events to show people around the world what a special place we have."
There are just four U.S.-based racing events on the World Cup circuit -- the highest level of competition in non-Olympic years -- this season. In ski-crazed European nations like Switzerland and Austria, entire venues fill out with thousands of fans for World Cup events. Radamus wants to see similar growth in ski hotspots like Lake Tahoe, Utah and Colorado, and said that bringing events home and into historical resorts like Palisades can bring the next generation.
"When I was growing up and I saw ski racing in the U.S., it made the sport seem real to me and hopefully bringing the sport back to the kids around here will make it seem real to them," Radamus said.
The races begin on Saturday and Sunday with the first competitors heading down the hill at 11:00 a.m.