When Vermont-schooled Olympian Mikaela Shiffrin arrived at the Killington Ski Resort last Thanksgiving for its annual World Cup women’s race, she didn’t expect a shocking fall would force her to take a break.
Three months later, Killington is finding itself having to temporarily sit out the international event.
The largest snow-sport area in Eastern North America announced Tuesday it would close its Superstar Trail chairlift April 13 to begin construction of a new six-passenger high-speed replacement.
Killington will remain open for spring skiing by using its K-1 gondola and other lifts. But the Superstar work, estimated to take eight months, will mean the World Cup trail won’t fully reopen until shortly after the November race, which has drawn some 20,000 spectators and a national television audience of 2 million viewers since 2016.
As a result, the ski circuit will move this year to Copper Mountain in Colorado, although “the race is expected to return to Killington Thanksgiving weekend 2026,” the Vermont resort said in a statement.
Shiffrin, a 2013 graduate of the Northeast Kingdom’s Burke Mountain Academy, has won the Killington event’s slalom for all but two of its eight years, placing fifth in 2022 before falling last November while attempting to score her 100th career World Cup title.
The two-time Olympic gold medalist made news this month when she announced she was dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder following the crash and wouldn’t defend her giant-slalom gold medal at the Alpine skiing world championships.
“It’s a strange place to be returning from surgery eight weeks ago, from laying in bed with a drainage tube six weeks ago, to return mid-season in the middle of world championships where everybody is talking about the medals and all the other athletes are fighting and on their top form,” she told the Associated Press.
But Shiffrin, pairing with U.S. colleague Breezy Johnson, went on to win a new team combined event. She called her fall and current rise “maybe one of the biggest learning experiences of my career.”
Killington expressed similar optimism about bouncing back.
“This $12 million investment will elevate the guest experience for decades to come,” Killington President Mike Solimano said in a statement.
