KILLINGTON — Since its addition to the international ski racing circuit five years ago, the Killington World Cup has focused on Vermont-schooled Olympic gold medalist Mikaela Shiffrin and her competition.
This weekend, however, Shiffrin and her competition had competition of their own.
The Covid-19 pandemic that canceled last year’s event, for example, compelled the Vermont resort to limit ticket sales to 10,000 per day to allow physical distancing rather than 2019’s record crowd of twice that.
Then, after warm weather forced crews to funnel 15 million gallons of water through snowmaking guns, a last-minute storm blanketed the freshly groomed race course with up to a foot of unwelcome accumulation just hours before the event’s start.
“I think Covid has been hard on everybody,” Killington President Mike Solimano said amid the swirl, “and the only time all year we don’t want snow is right now.”
And yet the largest ski area in the East nonetheless saw Shiffrin ultimately win the World Cup’s lone U.S. event for women, all while transforming this slope-side town of 1,407 into a momentary metropolis and attracting millions of television viewers on NBC and outlets in more than 60 countries.
“Every single race is an enormous test, and it’s very nerve-wracking as well,” said Shiffrin, echoing the thoughts of hundreds of behind-the-scenes workers who staffed the roller-coaster event. “It’s like swerving down a highway at 80 miles an hour — you’re just like, ‘What is happening?’ ”
Killington’s streak of building its World Cup audience seemed unstoppable, with an initial 30,000 total spectators in 2016 climbing as high as nearly 40,000 each subsequent year. Then Covid pulled the rug out from under the event in 2020 and promised several crowd-curbing pandemic precautions this year.
Attendees not only needed tickets to a usually open venue but also had to show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test. The press, for its part, found its traditional fireside chat with some 60 international athletes replaced by the seven American competitors plugging into a video conference platform.
Shiffrin — a 2013 graduate of the Northeast Kingdom’s Burke Mountain Academy — apologized after her internet connection froze during the briefing.
“It hasn’t been easy weather to contend with the last week, and now all of a sudden it’s dumping snow,” the 26-year-old said. “I know everybody at Killington is doing their absolute best to make it the best race that we can have.”
Teammate Paula Moltzan, a recent University of Vermont skier, saw a silver lining in the storm clouds.
“It’s a real advantage when the weather is bad because, as a college racer in the East, I saw a lot of bad weather and a lot of bad race days,” Moltzan said. “It’s not that ideal for a lot of people, but it doesn’t faze me too much.”
Course groomers felt otherwise. They woke Saturday to blowing and drifting snow on a once hard-packed hill.
“I came down the course this morning during inspection,” former Vermont Olympian Doug Lewis said over the loudspeakers, “and it was perfect on the surface … if you could see it.”
Indeed, a Jumbotron pictured trail markers struggling in a gray fog.
“Super cold, the wind chill is really high,” Lewis said. “It’s very tough.”
The weather canceled Friday’s training runs and postponed the start of Saturday’s giant slalom race before the first nine competitors descended. But with winds gusting at 30 miles per hour, organizers sidelined the rest of the event until Sunday.
“It’s exceedingly rare for them to cancel a race after only nine skiers,” Olympic gold medalist Ted Ligety said on NBC, which filled time by replaying Shiffrin’s 2019 slalom run — a discipline she has won every year Killington has hosted the World Cup.
Shiffrin hoped to make that record five for five Sunday and, after her first of two tries, sat two-tenths of a second behind the leader.
“Thinking about and wanting to win five is not going to help me actually do what I need to do,” Shiffrin said before her last run. “I’ll try to push the gas pedal a little bit more.”
As overcast skies spit snow, Shiffrin did just that, speeding down in the day’s shortest time of 48.26 seconds.
“I don’t know if I can ski a faster slalom,” she said as a capacity crowd rang cowbells.
First-run-winner Petra Vlhova of Slovakia then pushed off the start, only to catch her ski on a gate and finish second.
“What is it about this place, Killington?” NBC commentator Dan Hicks said in conclusion. “The magic of it, how special it is for Mikaela Shiffrin.”
With that, Shiffrin claimed her 46th slalom victory, tying Swedish Alpine legend Ingemar Stenmark’s record for World Cup wins in a single discipline.
“I hope that everybody enjoyed watching,” said Shiffrin, who’s off to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, “because that was about as much show as we have.”
