In Case You Missed It

No mo FOMO—it’s game on for ski racing season

Due to circumstances beyond my prediction or control, this is the first winter in well over a decade that not a single member of my family was on site for an early season domestic World Cup. Cue the sad music–the struggle is real!

On one hand, it was a revelation to have a verrrrrry slow-paced, extra-long weekend with zero travel hassles, parking issues, gatekeeper cards or frostbite. On the other hand, the FOMO nearly killed me.

For anyone in my situation in this country, it’s not hard to avoid ski racing coverage. If you stick to mainstream news you’d never know that World Cup skiing was happening anywhere, let alone kicking off here at home. That is, unless you are on Instagram.

I did have to completely quarantine from Instagram until the party was over. Instead, we tuned into Outside TV and I clung to little familiar live snippets in the background—voices like Doug Lewis and Peter Graves announcing and Uncle E firing up the crowd in the stands. When we did manage to find network coverage, Steve Porino’s quips and insights helped make it feel like things were as they should be, that ski season was Game On!

This, I realized, was the soundtrack of my kids’ youth, in the same way Bob Beattie’s voice had been the soundtrack to mine. It was the jumpstart to winter that always got our competitive juices flowing. Back then, Beattie’s voice was beaming from Europe, usually the traditional season opener in Val D’Isere. He was actually there on site, as were a solid smattering of American journalists. If an American did well, Beattie nabbed a TV interview in the finish area. I fantasized about someday having that finish line interview with Beattie, and when it finally happened—bad perm and all—I felt I had truly arrived in the Big Leagues.

Something I miss from that era is the mainstream coverage, much of which Beattie himself willed into being with his particular magic—a mixture of Barnum and Bailey showmanship and used car dealer salesmanship. (If you need a Beattie primer, here’s a start in Skiing History and one right here on Racer Ex). We complained then that they never showed the whole race, and Beattie spent too much time on the “color”, talking about crepes and fondue; but still, ski racing was a staple of winter sports on American TV.

Today, you have to really WORK to find your fix as a ski racing fan, but it wasn’t always that way. When I research articles for info on racers in the days before the World Cup, the things that pop up most often are articles in the New York Times. They and other major newspapers regularly covered top international competitions. There were also full-blown features on ski racing—even women ski racers—in Sports Illustrated, and not just in the swimsuit edition.

On the flip side, we do have livetiming, and what ski racing fan has not cheered and sworn at that screen with nearly the same passion as we do when seeing the actual race on TV. With the season in full swing livetiming is serving up a full menu of distraction from all across the globe. One upside of the tour moving back to Europe is that we can get our ski racing fix bright and early to start our weekends.

SKIING HISTORY LESSONS

If you’re looking for some added context to your World Cup viewing this season, I hope you’ll check out a few of my recent articles in Skiing History. If you don’t have a subscription to Skiing History and you love the sport, I urge you to get one. It’s a small price to pay for keeping the lights on at one of the few remaining print magazines and the only one dedicated to our sport’s history. You can get a glimpse of the articles on the Skiing History site or on mine.

Last spring, the Evolution of On Course Safety took on what I think is the most important issue in the sport right now. There is so much more to the topic than could fit in the article, and I hope this conversation grows.

On a much lighter note was this profile on the “Unsinkable Uncle E”. If you have been to an event in the last decade or more and wondered about the person behind the voice and zany costumes, check it out. If you haven’t been to a live ski racing event, it may inspire you to get out there! If you don’t have an issue with FOMO get yourself to Instagram and follow him @Unclee111

You’ve probably noticed that women are staying in ski racing longer for a variety of reasons. In the Sept/Oct issue we got into that. This piece, A Golden Age For World Cup Women focused on speed skiers, including Americans Jackie Wiles and Lindsey Vonn. After it was published, Paula Moltzan announced her NRM partnership, highlighting how women are able to pursue athletic careers with an insurance policy for life plans. It’s another topic that you’ll surely see more.

Coming up is an article about Sarah Schleper and her quest to race in her seventh Olympics, this time alongside her son Lasse. On the Olympic theme, look for a “Then and Now” article on Cortina, hosting the Olympics seventy years after their first crack at the Games. For that piece, I had the privilege of interviewing Pia Riva McIsaac and Carla Marchelli, two spectacular 90-year-old Italian ski racers and learned a ton about ski racing and straight-up history.

GET WELL SOON

Finally, this time of year I’m feeling for athletes with those early season injuries that seem to come in tsunamis, cutting the season short before it even starts. It is heartbreaking for the big guns in an Olympic year, but I ache even more for the little guns—the ones who don’t have thousands of followers on social media flooding them with condolences; the ones who trudge quietly to rehab and to the anonymous grind of coming back to a dream that, from a hospital bed or a couch or a classroom, feels impossible. And boy oh boy do I also feel for anyone around them because I know from experience they can get mighty salty at times like these.

That’s my kick off to winter. Yours may or may not have been exciting but it’s cold as hell in these parts and there’s snow on the ground, so life is pretty good!