Skicross gives racers new hope

ASPEN, Colo. – Two summers at the Olympic Training Center weren’t enough for Winter X’s David Lamb to punch his ticket to the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.

He had several close calls in Alpine competitions as a member of the U.S. Ski Team, then left Colorado Springs frustrated and disappointed. He wondered whether he had squandered his only shot at the Olympics.

“You had to suck it up and accept the fact that you’re going to have to let something like that go,” said Lamb, who earned his finance degree from the University of Denver in 2005 and didn’t qualify for the Turin Olympics.

Now rejuvenated with new hope in a new sport, Lamb isn’t abandoning his Olympic dream.

The International Olympic Committee approved skicross in November for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, citing a “strong appeal for the young generation” in the freestyle event that’s a fusion of motocross and downhill racing.

Unlike Alpine skiing, skicross requires that competitors race against each other on courses with a slew of tabletop jumps, banked turns, rollers and gaps. The courses contain both natural features and man-made ones.

The finals of the Winter X Games 11 version of skicross, called skier X, are today on Buttermilk Mountain. The men’s favorite is Sweden’s Lars Lewen, who won gold at Winter X Games 10. Former Alpine Olympic medalist Daron Rahlves was first in Friday’s qualifying. The women’s favorites are former Winter X medalists Ophelie David of France and Anik Demers-Wild of Canada.

Lamb, 25, of Steamboat Springs, Colo., hopes the Vancouver Olympics can be a “realistic possibility,” despite being eliminated Friday in a qualifying run.

“It would be realizing goals,” said Lamb, a two-time All-American in alpine skiing at Denver. “All of a sudden, you’re back in. It would be incredible.”

An unexpected combination of TV exposure and the successful debut of snowboardcross in Turin enabled skicross to gain international credibility.

The skier X finals will be broadcast live on ESPN. Snowboardcross, a sport often compared to short-track speedskating, attracted large crowds and drew quality TV ratings in Turin, partly because of the likelihood of collisions among competitors.

In skicross, competitors race in heats of six, and crashes are common. Skiers typically take an aggressive approach in elimination rounds, cutting corners as tightly as possible and worrying more about speed than precision.

“It’s fun because of the jumps. It’s fun because of the speed of the hill,” said Tahir Bisic, a University of Colorado graduate. “You’ve got other guys there, and you’re racing with them head to head. You’ve got to be so stable on your skis because if somebody just touches you a little bit, it’s so easy to fall.”

“There are a lot of persons and a lot of pressure, and you have to stay really focused,” David said. “Many things can happen. You have to stay in good position.”

Norwegian Audun Groenvold said skicross wouldn’t have become an Olympic sport without increased financial backing from ski manufacturers.

“Before they looked at us like we were old skiers that might not succeed in Alpine racing,” Groenvold said. “Now that it’s going Olympic, they see that this is a serious sport and that we’re really trying to perform well and that we’re not just doing this for fun.”