Women’s World Cup ski racing is coming to Mont-Tremblant, Que.
Alpine Canada and the ski resort northwest of Montreal have conditional approval from snowboarding’s world governing physique for annual girls’s large slalom races from 2023 to 2025, Alpine Canada mentioned Tuesday in an announcement.
Course enhancements are underway and take a look at races are scheduled for February and March.
The first double large slalom races at Mont-Tremblant’s World Cup are deliberate for Dec. 2-3, 2023.
“People at Tremblant have been speaking about attempting to carry a World Cup there for 15 years,” Alpine Canada chief government officer Therese Brisson advised The Canadian Press.
Canada’s slalom and large slalom skiers not often race at residence. Panorama, B.C. was the location of ladies’s slalom and GS in 2007.
“Our girls’s workforce, we’re so extremely sturdy in tech occasions, but we did not have a World Cup,” Brisson mentioned.
“Having a tech occasion was one thing that was very a lot a precedence, and simply so near Montreal, the place there’s the Laurentians, and even into Eastern Ontario, there’s an incredible fan base that not often will get to see reside World Cup ski racing.”
Canada has been a daily cease on the worldwide downhill circuit for three many years.
Season opener in Soelden, Austria
Lake Louise, Alta., will host males’s and ladies’s World Cup downhills and super-G races Nov. 25-27 and Dec. 2-4, respectively, for a complete of six races.
Two-time Olympian Valerie Grenier of St. Isidore, Ont., is thrilled on the prospect of racing GS, which is her specialty, on the mountain the place she realized to ski.
Every time I see athletes race at residence, it simply appears so superb. … The indisputable fact that I’m going to expertise that, it is simply mind-blowing.— Alpine skier Valerie Grenier on racing in Canada at Mont-Tremblant
“I’m simply so freaking joyful,” the 25-year-old advised The Canadian Press from Italy, the place’s she’s coaching for Saturday’s large slalom in Soelden, Austria.
“It’s a dream come true as a result of each time I see athletes from different nations race at residence, when it is their residence hill or actually shut, it simply appears so superb.
“You can inform it means lots to them and the followers. Now the truth that I’m going to truly expertise that, it is simply mind-blowing for me.”
Tuesday’s announcement, and different variables, might influence the way forward for racing at Lake Louise, which has hosted World Cup racing for 30 years.
WATCH | Marie-Michèle Gagnon ninth at Lake Louise in 2021:
Lac-Etchemin, Que.’s Marie-Michèle Gagnon completed ninth place in the ladies’s downhill occasion in the course of the FIS Alpine World Cup competitors in Lake Louise, Alberta.
The girls’s GS races in Quebec would overlap Alberta’s girls’s downhills on the identical weekend, if the latter stays the place it’s on the calendar.
Brisson says Alpine Canada stays dedicated to internet hosting males’s pace races in Western Canada.
The International Ski and Snowboard Association (FIS) has but to launch a race itinerary for 2023-24.
Speed race in Western Canada a precedence
FIS management is unsettled. The ski federations of Austria, Germany, Croatia and Switzerland are contesting the re-election of president Johan Eliasch and have taken their enchantment to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
“Whether there will probably be girls’s pace on the calendar in North America in any respect continues to be to be decided,” Brisson mentioned. “My precedence is unquestionably to land males’s pace in the west.”
An Austrian media outlet reported 2022 was the final yr for Lake Louise’s World Cup races, citing FIS race director Klaus Waldner.
“It can be premature to say that, for certain,” Brisson mentioned. “When I requested resorts who would have an interest in internet hosting a males’s World Cup whether or not it’s in early winter in the normal time-slot, or in February, pleasantly various resorts put up their hand and mentioned they have been .
“Lake Louise is a part of that dialog as effectively.”
The males have historically opened their downhill season with a North American block of races in Lake Louise after which Beaver Creek, Colo., earlier than heading to Europe.
This season breaks from that ritual, nevertheless, with a pair of males’s downhills Oct. 29-30 and two girls’s Nov. 5-6 in Europe.
The begin home for these races is in Zermatt, Switzerland and the end line in Cervinia, Italy for the primary cross-border World Cup.
Mont-Tremblant a journey match for athletes
The girls’s downhills in Lake Louise have not had different North American pace races adjoining to them on the calendar.
A promoting level for Mont-Tremblant was its World Cup falls per week after slalom and GS races in Killington, Vt., which makes for streamlined journey for athletes.
Alpine Canada assumed operational duty of Lake Louise’s World Cups this yr after a decade of administration by Winterstart Events.
While Lake Louise is a tried and examined venue, it’s costly to function these races in a nationwide park, significantly with rising vitality prices for snow-making, Brisson mentioned.
“In order to make Lake Louise work, we want the size of six races, or we’ve in the previous,” she acknowledged. “It has in all probability the very best prices for snow-making in the world.”
Whistler, B.C., final hosted males’s and ladies’s World Cup downhill, super-G, large slalom and alpine mixed in 2008 as take a look at occasions for the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics.
There is not sufficient terrain at Mont-Tremblant for downhill or super-G races, Brisson mentioned.
“There’s a gorgeous run that has some good deep components for a GS monitor that finishes proper in the village,” she mentioned.