{"id":801999,"date":"2019-12-04T15:04:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-04T22:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/ski-racing-101-your-guide-to-this-weekends-birds-of-prey-in-beaver-creek\/"},"modified":"2019-12-04T15:04:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-04T22:04:00","slug":"ski-racing-101-your-guide-to-this-weekends-birds-of-prey-in-beaver-creek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/ski-racing-101-your-guide-to-this-weekends-birds-of-prey-in-beaver-creek\/","title":{"rendered":"Ski Racing 101: Your guide to this weekend\u2019s Birds of Prey in Beaver Creek"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Italy’s Dominik Paris is one of the guys to watch this week at the Xfinity Birds of Prey World Cup in Beaver Creek.<\/strong>
Jeff McIntosh \/ AP File | The Canadian Press<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

BEAVER CREEK \u2014 Not everyone grew up here. Not everyone was here to watch Tamara McKinney win gold in the combined during the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Vail in 1989.<\/p>\n

And, as such, not everyone knows the about World Cup skiing and what the Xfinity Birds of Prey FIS World Cup ski races are. It\u2019s OK to admit it. Most of us grew up in parts of the country where the World Cup is a strange quadrennial soccer tournament.<\/p>\n

Thus, we give you Ski Racing 101, the answers to your questions.<\/p>\n

What is the World Cup?<\/p>\n

Consider it major league skiing in American sports parlance. The best skiers in the world compete at this level.<\/p>\n

In format, it\u2019s more like the PGA Tour. Each weekend during the winter, like golfers during the summer, the tour goes to venues around the world.<\/p>\n

After the traditional opening races in Soelden, Austria, in October and Levi, Finland, the men\u2019s tour starts in earnest in Lake Louise, Alberta, during Thanksgiving weekend and comes here annually during the first weekend of December.<\/p>\n

After Birds of Prey, both the men and the women, the latter are in Lake Louise this weekend, head to Europe for the rest of the season. The men\u2019s World Cup\u2019s next stop is in Val d\u2019Isere, France.<\/p>\n

What are the disciplines?<\/p>\n

There are five different kinds of races, or disciplines \u2014 downhill, super-G, giant slalom, slalom and combined.<\/p>\n

Downhill and super-G are speed events. Giant slalom and slalom are technical, or tech events. As the name implies, combined is a mix of both.<\/p>\n

The distance and speed involved decreases, while the need for turning increases as one goes from downhill to super-G to giant slalom, also known as GS, to slalom.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Downhill is exactly what it sounds like \u2014 get down the hill as quickly as possible. There is one run in a downhill.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Super-G is a shorter downhill with a few gates that racers are required to turn past. The kicker in super-G is that racers do not get to ski the course before race day. The morning of a super-G, the racers can inspect the course to get an idea of where the gates are, but this element usually leads to some surprises on race day. Like the downhill, there is just one run.<\/p>\n

\u2022 GS \u2014 see, call it GS \u2014 is a two-run race. There are anywhere from 56 to 70 gates with gates relatively close together, as compared to slalom.<\/p>\n

The entire field starts a GS or slalom, with only the top 30 racers advancing to the second run, where the fastest racer from the morning run goes last and the slowest qualifier goes first.<\/p>\n

This is called, \u201cmaking the flip.\u201d The racer with the lowest combined time from the two runs wins.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Slalom has the same number of gates as GS, but they are closer in vertical distance together, testing the racers agility to the maximum. Like GS, slalom is a two-run race with only 30 making the flip. (See, the lingo makes you sound smart.)<\/p>\n

What is being raced this week?<\/p>\n

Now that you know what the disciplines are, here we go.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The men race super-G on Friday at 10:45 a.m.<\/p>\n

\u2022 It\u2019s downhill on Saturday at 11 a.m.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Giant slalom is set for Sunday, with the first run starting at 9:45 a.m. and the second run at 12:45 p.m.<\/p>\n

How are season titles determined?<\/p>\n

The top 30 finishers in each race receive points based on their finish. For example, the winner gets 100 points, while the second-place finisher gets 80, etc.<\/p>\n

By the way, in a two-run race, just making the flip doesn\u2019t guarantee points. In the GS, slalom and combined, racers must finish both runs.<\/p>\n

Racers rack up points in each of the disciplines, downhill, super-G, GS, slalom and combined, as the season goes through mid-March. The racer with the most points in a discipline wins that year\u2019s World Cup discipline championship and gets a crystal globe for his or her efforts.<\/p>\n

Whoever racks up the most points from all five disciplines from the entire season is the World Cup champion, and gets another globe for that.<\/p>\n

The defending men\u2019s World Cup champion is Austria\u2019s Marcel Hirscher, and he won it eight years in a row. However, he retired this fall. The big question on the men\u2019s side this season is who fills the void? Lots of racers are now in the hunt.<\/p>\n

Mikaela Shiffrin is the three-time defending women\u2019s champion, and she is already leading the points in her quest for a fourth.<\/p>\n

What do Worlds and Olympics have to do with the World Cup?<\/p>\n

Absolutely nothing, statistically.<\/p>\n

Shiffrin has won the slalom at the world championships, held biennially, in 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019, and won the Olympic slalom in 2014 and giant slalom in 2018. Those seven wins \u2014 she won super-G also last winter \u2014 do not count toward Shiffrin\u2019s 62 World Cup wins.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t make much sense, as a skier\u2019s record at world championships, which were held here in 1989, 1999 and 2015, is a very big deal and considered one of measures of his or her legacy.<\/p>\n

The 2019-20 season is the only year in a four year cycle without worlds or Olympics, yet these events are not far from anyone\u2019s mind. The 2021 worlds are in Cortina, Italy. The 2022 Olympics are in Beijing.<\/p>\n

So who could do well this week?<\/p>\n

Predicting ski racing is dangerous business. One is more likely to be wrong than right. That\u2019s the nature of having the best in the world going at each other each week.<\/p>\n

But, as we\u2019ve mentioned, on the men\u2019s side, Hirscher has retired, so the men\u2019s race for the World Cup title is wide open. The top five returning ski racers from the 2018-19 season are France\u2019s Alexis Pinturault, Norway\u2019s Henrik Kristoffersen, Italy\u2019s Dominik Paris, Austria\u2019s Vincent Kriechmayr and Switzerland\u2019s Beat Feuz.<\/p>\n

Is there home-snow advantage?<\/p>\n

Yes, which brings us to the U.S. Ski Team. For the men, this is the only weekend racing in their home country. This weekend caps the two weeks the World Cup spends in North America before heading to Europe for months. These races are home games for the Americans.<\/p>\n

Ted Ligety has six GS wins on this course, but the speedsters have also had success at Birds of Prey. Travis Ganong skied to Worlds downhill silver here in February 2015. Steve Nyman has three podiums here in his career.<\/p>\n

How do you watch Birds of Prey?<\/p>\n

As of this writing, there is no skier access to the course. That could change as the week proceeds. Beaver Creek, as a World Cup host, has gotten its shuttle-bus service down to an art form. Park in the lots, and hop the bus to Beaver Creek Village. The bus to the finish stadium at Red Tail will be right there.<\/p>\n

This story is from VailDaily.com<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Italy’s Dominik Paris is one of the guys to watch this week at the Xfinity Birds of Prey World Cup in Beaver Creek.Jeff McIntosh \/ AP File | The Canadian Press BEAVER CREEK \u2014 Not everyone grew up here. Not everyone was here to watch Tamara McKinney win gold in the combined during the FIS […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-801999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-02 04:56:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}