While most skiers and snowboarders throughout Colorado were probably watching the heavy snowfall this past weekend with joy, fans of the Alpine World Cup were probably leaning more towards the disappointed side of the spectrum.
Beaver Creek’s Xfinity Birds of Prey Men’s Alpine World Cup was fully cancelled this past weekend due to high winds and heavy snowfall. The first race of the weekend, Friday’s downhill, was initially delayed around 8:15am on December 1 before it was fully cancelled around 12:30pm because of high snowfall. Saturday’s race, also a downhill, was cancelled by 8:44am as a result of both wind and snow. Sunday’s Super G race, much like Saturday, was canceled by 8:23am because of high winds.
The Men’s World Cup Downhill race in Zermatt-Cervinia was also cancelled earlier this year. As a result, there’s been only one men’s World Cup race so far this season, a slalom race at Gurgl in Austria. Two men’s races are set to take place this up coming weekend at Val d’Isere in France, a giant slalom and a slalom.
This past weekend’s Women’s Tremblant World Cup went off without any major problems. Mikaela Shiffrin took third place both Saturday and Sunday, finishing behind Petra Vlhova (2nd) and Federica Brignone (1st) on Saturday and Lara Gut-Behrami (2nd) and Federica Brignone (1st) on Sunday.
A full cancellation at the Birds of Prey is definitely sad. I managed to make my way up there for one of the races last year and had an absolute blast. But it’s impossible to be really upset when the cancellation is the result of a big dump of snow. Beaver Creek has had a nice 15 inches of snowfall over the past seven days, with 8″ touching down in the last 48 hours.
Good thing the World Cup will be returning to Colorado in March for the Stifel Aspen Winternational!
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Image Credit: Beaver Creek via Instagram