VAIL, Colorado— While Vail and Beaver Creek’s June 3 victory in the race to host the 2015 FIS World Alpine Ski Championships is still a fresh memory, the actual road to 2015 begins September 8-10 as key members of the International Ski Federation (FIS), European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and Tridem Sports pay their initial visit to the Vail Valley for the opening World Championships Coordination Commission meeting.

“While we are still four and a half years out from the Championships,” explained Vail Valley Foundation president Ceil Folz, “the Coordination Commission meetings are extremely important as they will establish the groundwork for how we work with our FIS, EBU and Tridem Sports partners to ensure that the 2015 World Championships are the best they can possibly be.”

Representing the FIS on the visit will be Secretary General Sarah Lewis, Communications Manager Riikka Rakic and Event and Sponsor Manager Marcel Looze. The EBU will be represented by Ingolfur Hannesson, head of Winter and Indoor Sports, along with Christian Pirzer, president of Tridem Sports.
   
The three-day Coordination Commission gathering will include tours of proposed venues along with meetings to discuss a wide range of topics relating to the planning and preparations for the 2015 World Championships.
   
Vail and Beaver Creek will play host to annual visits from the Coordination Commission, while also sending delegations to additional events and meetings for reporting and study purposes.

Image: Greg Johnson (center) outlines proposed options for Marcel Looze (left) of the FIS and Ingo Hannesson (right) from the EBU.

Max Gartner has been named the President of Alpine Canada Alpin following today’s (Sept. 8) Annual General Meeting of the national governing body for alpine and ski cross racing in Canada.

Gartner, a ski coach in Canada for 20 years rejoined ACA’s Athletics department in 2003 as Chief Athletics Officer. He will now lead the day-to-day business operations of the organization in preparation for the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships next February and the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.

Calgary businessman Gary Allan, who has served as ACA’s President since 2006, takes over as the Chairman of Board for Reid Drury. Drury will stay on in an advisory capacity after his term expires.

"Canada’s ski teams have been steadily building momentum since 2003, when Max took over responsibilities of ACA’s Athletics department." said Allan. "The CAST teams have just finished their most successful Olympic cycle ever, with three World Championship medals and 10 World Cup wins. With Max’s passion, leadership and expertise, the organization will remain focused on securing the resources required to continue developing ski racing champions," he added.

Gartner and Allan applauded the efforts of departing board directors including Geoff Hendrie (Ontario) and John St. Arnaud (Quebec) for their commitment to maintaining the momentum of recent national team success and growth of the sport domestically.

Prime Ski Racing is the Goal

When you ski race, you will, in fact, be competing in three competitions. The obvious competition is the one that occurs against the rest of the field, the goal of which is to get the best result possible. But before you compete against the field, there is another competition you must win, namely, the race against the course, in which it does everything it can (course, snow and course conditions, terrain, weather) to beat you. But even before that, the most important race that you must prevail in is the mental race in which you compete against yourself. Here is a simple reality: If you don’t win the mental race, you won’t win the race against the course or against your competitors.

Contrary to what you may think, at whatever level in which you’re competing, the technical and physical aspects of ski racing don’t usually determine the winner. Racers who compete at the same level are very similar technically and physically. For example, on the World Cup, is Carlo Janka stronger than Aksel Lund Svindal? Is Lindsay Vonn more technically sound than Maria Riesch? In both cases, the answer is likely no. So, on any given day, what separates Bode Miller from Benny Raich or Tanja Poutianen from Tina Maze? The answer lies in who wins the mental race.

Whenever I talk to racers, I ask them what aspect of their sport seems to have the greatest impact on how they ski. Almost unanimously they say the mental part. I then ask how much time they devote to their mental preparation and their answer is almost always little or no time.

Without the big guns in the neighborhood, the U.S. men and Swiss women have done the major damage over the last couple days in Australia/New Zealand Cup action at Coronet Peak, New Zealand.

In today's (Sept. 3) slalom 17-year old Swiss skier Wendy Holdener decimated an international field with a 1.20 second margin over teammate Nadja Vogel. Norwegians Lene Loeseth and Rikke Gasmann-Brott placed third and fourth respectively.

The men's slalom win went to David Chodounsky with Canada's Patrick Biggs second and British skier Noel Baxter in third. Warner Nickerson placed sixth, well off the pace.

In GS on Thursday Slovakian Veronika Zuzulova snared the win and her seventh podium in a row dating back to Europa Cup races last March with a narrow margin win over Norway's Lotte Smiseth Sejersted. The Swiss group, though, jammed three skiers into the top six and four of eight with Andrea Dettling, Vogel, Marianne Abderhalen and Nadja Kamer finishing three-four-six and eight respectively.

Nickerson got the men's win over a couple of Swede's, Tim Lindgren in second and Jon Olsson in third. Grant Jampolsky posted fourth for the U.S.and Charles Christianson eighth. -h

Michael Thomas photo of Veronika Zuzulova.

By Hank McKee

It was a good drying day, despite the humidity being pushed ahead of the hurricane.  Hot air gave a September day a heavy blanket of summer.

On the drying line were the tell tale signs of the approaching change of season. Mixed among the Hawaiian shirts, shorts and towels were long sleeved pullovers, an indicator it has been cool in recent evenings.

Which means ski racing season is not far away.

Time wise it's actually here, but physically it's about as far as it can get, in New Zealand and South America. Maybe it's not yet time to start making predictions, but certainly time to start looking around, see who else has a laundry list.

McThought it was interesting some of the strongest results from New Zealand didn't come from Bode Miller or from Ted Ligety (don't get me wrong guys, your results were right on target I'll bet) but from periphery guys, like Warner Nickerson, David Chodounsky and Will Gregorak. I'm sure some would argue, but to me this speaks well for program depth. Proof will be in the puddin' as they say.

Other news around the globe includes Anja Paerson's decision to race another season and Maria Holaus' to pull the plug after too many injuries in her 26years. The former is great news, the latter not so much.

Another report says the Swiss have fired federation manager Denis Vaucher after mere months in office with the explanation from top boss Urs Lehman including the phrase "deeply shaken trust relationship." Bet there's an interesting story behind this move.