[K]ILLINGTON — Johan Jonsson held a bright blue and yellow flag of his native Sweden high and let it sway in the breeze. Jane Aiken carried a dark banner emblazoned with the name of her homeland, New Zealand.
And Ben Knoll, a Connecticut resident with a second home in Plymouth, had a small American flag on a short stick affixed to the top of his hat.
Around his neck dangled his most recent purchase, made just seconds earlier: a shiny new cowbell.
Why a cowbell?
“Because it’s awesome,” Knoll responded, proudly clanging his new “USA”-labeled noisemaker.
People from near and far traveled to Killington Ski Resort to see 90 athletes from 20 countries compete over two days of Audi FIS Women’s Ski World Cup racing this weekend.
Killington officials estimated the crowd Saturday at 18,000 people — which would be the largest ever for such a World Cup event.
Heart-pumping and get-off-your-seat-and-start-jumping music filled the air Saturday and Sunday, keeping the crowds energized between competitors speeding down Killington’s Superstar trail.
“It draws people together,” Aiken said Saturday of the skiing event. “It’s like everyone locking arms.”
Aiken, who grew up in New Zealand, has lived in Vermont for 30 years. Over the weekend, she got a chance to meet and support World Cup racer Piera Hudson, the only entrant from New Zealand.
“She fell,” Aiken said Saturday afternoon, “but I’m still flying the flag.”
Although not everyone thinks of New Zealand as a skiing hotbed, Aiken said it’s a popular sport there.
“In the North Island we have a big volcano that we ski on,” she said. “And in the South Island there’s a lot (of ranges) with ski fields all over.”
Jonsson, a former ski racer from Sweden, drove up to Killington from New York City, where he now lives. He made the same trip last year to watch the racing.
“It’s just a great festive event,” he said, keeping his flag waving above him.
Multicolored banners from many other ski-renowned countries, such as Italy, Germany and Austria, also could be seen fluttering in the grandstands.
Shiffrin: First, second finishes
It was American Mikaela Shiffrin who had the red, white and blue flags waving the most and cowbells rattling the loudest for each of her four runs through the weekend competition. Shiffrin, an Olympic gold medalist in slalom at Sochi, Russia, in 2014, honed her ski racing skills at Vermont’s Burke Mountain Academy.
Shiffrin came in second Saturday in the giant slalom followed by a first-place finish Sunday in the slalom. She won the slalom competition at last year’s World Cup event in Killington, too.
“Today I was thinking, sort of the whole day, that I wanted to be aggressive, but also, like, sometime I think, don’t screw this up,” Shiffrin said Sunday after her slalom victory. “When I ski really good slalom it almost feels like I’m flying, and I had that feeling both runs today, which is a really good feeling to have.”
Shiffrin said this year’s first place in the slalom at Killington was even “sweeter” than last year’s win in the event.
“Last year I was really nervous, almost incapacitated by nerves,” Shiffrin said. “This year, I felt like my nerves were more fuel for my skiing, and that’s the way that I like (it).”
Sunday’s results in the slalom had Shiffrin first (1:40.91) followed by Petra Vlhova, of Slovakia, in second (1:42.55) and Bernadette Schild, of Austria, third (1:43.58).
A day earlier, Viktoria Rebensburg, of Germany, took first (1:57.63) in the giant slalom, followed by Shiffrin (1:58.30) and Manuela Moelgg, of Italy (1:59.12).
The estimated crowd Saturday of 18,000 topped last year’s figure of 16,000 spectators attending the Saturday competition.
The ski racing fans were treated Saturday to temperatures reaching into the mid-40s and sunny skies before light rain began to trickle down for some of the final runs of the day.
Killington officials estimated Sunday’s crowd at 16,000 people, higher than last year’s Sunday figure of about 14,000. Those attending Sunday had to stick out cold weather mixed in with occasional flurries.
The event last year in Killington marked a return of World Cup racing to the East Coast after a 25-year absence. The most recent previous competition took place in 1991 in Waterville Valley in New Hampshire.
The wait in Vermont had been even longer, stretching back nearly 40 years to a World Cup race at Stratton.
In April, Killington officials announced a two-year agreement with FIS, or the Federation Internationale de Ski, to host the event again this year and in 2018 over the Thanksgiving weekend.
Green Mountains Olympians
Among those watching the event in Killington over the weekend was Billy Kidd, of Stowe, the first American male alpine skier to take home an Olympic medal, winning a silver in the slalom at the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria.
“The real skiers know that a lot of skiing in America started in Vermont,” he said Saturday, wearing his trademark tan Stetson hat pulled down low on his head.
Barbara Ann Cochran, winner of the 1972 Olympic gold medal in slalom in Sapporo, Japan, served as a gate judge on the slopes over the two-day event in Killington, joined by several members of her well-known ski race family.
Cochran, who lives in Starksboro, said the large crowds at Killington are not surprising.
“I think in the East Coast, it’s a huge community of ski racers that can support ski racing,” Cochran said. “To have a World Cup race in our backyard like this, it brings people in to see the best in the world.”
Covering their trail
Creating World Cup-worthy course conditions in Vermont during the early part of the ski season was no simple task.
Mike Solimano, Killington’s CEO and president, said snowmakers used about 15 million gallons of water on the resort’s Superstar trail to get the course ready.
“There’s some pretty amazing firepower out on the trail,” he said. “At max we had about 120 guns running. That’s almost 2½ times what we typically have on that trail.”
The head of the resort said officials worked to learn from last year’s event to enhance this year’s version. That included adding more shuttle buses, from as far away as transit services in Connecticut, to bring people into the venue from remote parking lots.
Also, he said, the resort tripled the number of bathroom facilities.
Solimano has said last year’s event cost the resort more than $2.5 million to put on, which was offset by $1.3 million in revenue, mostly from sponsors. The net cost to the resort last year was $1.2 million, he added.
He said Sunday that although it’s too early to talk figures this year, the resort had spent more this time around and brought in more income from sponsorships. The town of Killington also contributed $100,000 to the cause. The net loss to the resort this year should be less than the previous year, but Solimano added, “It’s still costing us.”
Despite that cost, he said, the resort gains a great deal of name recognition through hosting the event, which aired on television and streamed online over the weekend on NBC to a worldwide audience.
Selling Vermont
The event also brought a boost to businesses up and down the roughly 5-mile Killington Road leading to the resort, according to Michael Coppinger, director of the Killington Pico Area Association.
Parking lots of restaurants, nightclubs and hotels along the road appeared full Friday and Saturday evenings, with Coppinger adding that many establishments had to bring on extra staffing to accommodate the crowds.
Several of the vendors at the event sold Vermont products, from cheese to socks. One booth aimed to sell the Killington Valley as a place for people to come, live and play, full time.
The Killington Valley initiative is part of an effort across the Rutland region to boost population and draw more tourists.
“We actually had a lot of people say they’d love to move here,” said Nicole Densmore, staffing the booth Saturday morning. But she added that convincing all members of those people’s families proved more challenging.
Densmore said she pitched the region to people stopping at the booth by telling them if they like to ski they could do it much more often if they lived near Killington mountain. “You can get up in the morning, take a couple of runs, get down, change and go to the office,” she said.
Asked if he would consider moving to the Killington region from New York City, Jonsson said it’s something he would think over.
“If I got a good job here,” the former Swedish ski racer said.
“It would have to be a great one,” added Blair Jonsson, his wife.
For Shiffrin, it wasn’t just the many family members and friends who traveled to Killington to cheer her on that made her feel back at home in Vermont.
“It’s familiar, even driving on the roads,” she said, noting the need to sometimes dodge potholes. “When you get to Europe everything is like, kind of perfect, and then you get here and everything is perfectly imperfect.”
