JEONGSEONG, South Korea — The Olympic competitions ended here Thursday with two Vail Valley women, Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin, charging down the course in the alpine combined.

For Geoff “Salty” and Allison Kohn Marriner, of Eagle, it was a 27-month journey to get to the finish line.

Geoff Marriner arrived at Jeongseon Alpine Centre, in one of the most rural parts of South Korea, in November of 2015, to take a job as mountain operations manager.

The ski area was built from scratch expressly for the fastest skiers on Earth. The fastest skiers on Earth have responded with rave reviews.

“This slope today on the downhill track, the guys did an amazing job,” said U.S. ski racer Bryce Bennett about Jeongseon, the venue for the Olympic speed events, after downhill training Feb. 8. “I know they’ve been here for months working their tails off, and it turned out perfect. That was one of the funner runs of downhill I’ve had. … They have the skills — all the guys in the cats and on the snowmaking crews. They know exactly what they’re doing, and they showed that.”

Much of that credit goes to Tom Johnston, the Wyoming cowboy who serves as chief of race here and also at the Birds of Prey races at Beaver Creek, as well as Olympic races at Salt Lake City in 2002 and Sochi in 2014.

But Geoff Marriner — who oversees snowmaking, grooming, lifts and ski patrol — helped build the foundation for Johnston to sculpt this gem of a race course.

So did Allison Kohn Marriner, who is one of the winch cat operators who prepared the track. She has spent the last three winters at Jeongseon.

“It’s been awesome,” Geoff Marriner said. “Everyone’s been super stoked on the preparation.”

It’s not easy to get to — Jeongseon Alpine Centre is 45 minutes away from the nearest Olympic venue through a winding valley dotted with isolated homes. The entire ski area is not much more than Beaver Creek’s Birds of Prey alone, along with three chairlifts and a newly built lodge and hotel at the bottom. The course starts at 4,495 feet in altitude, ends at 1,788 feet and is 1.78 miles long.

It shares common DNA with Beaver Creek. Bernhard Russi, the two-time Olympic downhill medalist who designed Birds of Prey, also designed this course. And Johnston brings his same masterful touch to this course as he does in Beaver Creek.

The Beaver Creek connection extends to the Marriners.

Geoff Marriner spent 18 years in different stints at Beaver Creek. He served in the grooming department as shift supervisor and assistant manager. In the summers, he worked on the preparation for the 2015 World Championships, helping construct the women’s Raptor course.

As a winch cat driver, Allison Kohn Marriner has helped build the tracks for Birds of Prey World Cups and the World Championships.

They are both graduates of the Colorado Mountain College-Leadville Ski Area Operations program.

After 2015 World Championships, Geoff was promoted to running the whole grooming department. But he heard about the opportunity in South Korea, applied and got the job.

When he arrived at Jeongseon in November 2015, there was little more than a couple offices at the base. The gondola wasn’t done, and all the necessary snowmaking wasn’t installed. There was some doubt whether the course would be ready for the first test event in 2016. But they got the work done in time, and results exceeded expectations.

“For the month and a half, two months leading up to test event, all the press in Europe was nothing but negative and bad, saying we were going to fail and it was going to suck,” Geoff Marriner said. “Then when everyone showed up, we had a friggin’ kick-ass course. It blew their minds.”

The run-up to the Olympic races has been intense — the crews have been working 12-hour days during the Games. Geoff Marriner said he hasn’t had a day off since late January.

The Marriners have been living in the nearby town of Jinbu, experiencing day-to-day life of South Korea — working to navigate everyday tasks that are a bit tougher in a foreign country, from supermarket visits to dentist’s appointments.

The couple is actually not quite at the finish line yet — they’ll get a short break, and then will be back to work, shaping the course for the Paralympics.

In March, they’ll finally head home for some rest and relaxation, celebrating the success.

“Cigars and drinking manhattans on the back porch probably for a good week or so,” Allison Kohn Marriner said.

The post For Colorado couple, years of Olympic work come to a speedy end appeared first on Park Record.

BONGPYEONG, South Korea — Elana Chase met both Torin Yater-Wallace and Alex Ferreira when they were about 8 years old, when she was a coach as Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club.

Ferreira was a impeccably polite boy who walked up and introduced himself. The kid couldn’t get enough of the trampoline.

She met Yater-Wallace on a chairlift. He was already a confident free-rider who “skied with purpose.” When she pictures Yater-Wallace as a kid, she pictures him with a cast on his hand — it seemed like he was always breaking something.

The common denominator was that they loved to ski. And they always showed up to training — for park, for powder, for whatever — because they loved to ski.

“They showed up and showed up and showed up,” said Chase, who now lives in Vail and is director of the freeski program at Ski and Snowboard Club Vail.

That work ethic continues 15 years later, as Yater-Wallace and Ferreira are competing together at the Olympics — Yater-Wallace’s second and Ferreira’s first.

Chase remains their coach, and she is here at the Olympics, at the top of the pipe for the competitions, to provide support to the young men, who are both favorites to medal.

“She’s the person that I find gives me the best advice and knows me well because we’ve worked so long together,” Yater-Wallace said. “Where, say, somebody else, maybe a coach, comes up to you to try and give you advice, she kind of knows the way I work where I go up to her to get advice.”

With Aaron Blunck (who attended Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy and was previously coached by Chase), Ferreira and Yater-Wallace going 1-2-3 in Tuesday’s qualifying, Chase’s coaching fingerprints are all over this ski halfpipe competition.

Chase works in concert with the coaches on the U.S. team.

“She’s obviously an amazing coach. She obviously is good at what she does and those guys see something special and get get good results with her,” said U.S. Ski Team halfpipe coach Ben Verge, adding that they let Yater-Wallace and Ferreira “drive that ship and do what works best for them.”

Chase has been coaching Yater-Wallace for so long, he struggled to even recall the number of years. Yater-Wallace noted that the U.S. Ski Team has its own coaches and camps, but having the familiar presence of Chase adds an element of familiarity.

“Just having that person that you’ve been sitting with your whole life,” he said. “It’s a little bit of a safe zone.”

Chase, who grew up in Connecticut and Vermont, now has nearly 20 years of coaching experience at Okemo Mountain School, Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club and Ski and Snowboard Club Vail. A former alpine skier at Montana State and moguls competitor with the U.S. Freestyle Development Team, Chase perhaps doesn’t fit the mold of a freeski role model for young kids.

“I don’t look freeski,” she said. “I don’t look the part, at all.”

But the kids who look past those superficialities tend to be the most coachable and the best fit for Chase.

“The kids I work with generally just want to get better,” she said. “If you’ve got the information and the goods, they’re going to take it.”

Ferreira is one of those kids. Chase calls him a voracious listener and reader, sucking in all the information that makes him a better skier and person.

In the last 10 months, Ferreira has been on fire, with wins at Tignes, France; Cardrona, New Zealand; and Dew Tour in Breckenridge. He has landed on the podium at X Games in Aspen, Mammoth and Snowmass.

“He’s a really fun and easy going guy, but he’s very calculated in the way he’s approached the last 12 months,” she said. “Every minute of the day he know what he’s doing. It’s all focus.”

Yater-Wallace failed to qualify for finals in Sochi, struggling with a collapsed lung and broken ribs. In 2015, he nearly died due to a rare bacterial infection, spending 10 days in a medically induced coma, but was able to come back and win Oslo X Games two months after being released from the hospital. His personal and professional challenges were recently documented in the film “Back to Life.”

Chase sees Yater-Wallace as a steely competitor who can look inside himself and bring out the best performances.

“I think what sets him apart and why all the competitors respect him is just how incredibly good he is under pressure,” she said. “How he’s able to continually pull out performances year after year after year with adversities, or coming back from injuries, or whatever’s going on.”

Fifteen years after she met them, Chase will be at the top of the halfpipe on Thursday helping Yater-Wallace and Ferreira reach their dreams of an Olympic medal.

No matter what happens, she won’t linger here at the Olympics, the pinnacle of the sport. By Saturday, she aims to be back in Vail, coaching her freeski kids, who are as young as 12, at the beginning of the journey.

“It helps you tell the story to the next kid and get them stoked,” she said.

The post Vail’s Elana Chase helps Aspen skiers tackle Olympic halfpipe appeared first on Park Record.

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Just making it to the start gate of the Olympics was something to be proud of for Park City skier Megan McJames.

McJames, 30, skis independently, meaning she doesn’t have the support of the U.S. Ski Team. The team cut her in 2012. Since then, she’s been responsible for her own coaching, travel, ski tuning and training.

Her budget is $50,000 a year, and she depends on fundraisers and sponsors to make it.

“This is my third Olympics and it’s taken a lot of work, and so I’m really, really proud,” she said Thursday between runs of the giant slalom. “Standing in the start gate looking down all those panels to the Olympic rings, it’s really special.”

McJames finished 31st, which was the second-best finish for an American, behind winner Mikaela Shiffrin. Among the other Americans, Resi Stiegler finished 36th, while Patricia Mangan did not finish the first run.

Throughout the season, McJames travels with various coaches, and has gotten support from her boyfriend, Cody Marshall. Podium Ski Service in Park City preps her skis, but she tunes and waxes them herself when she’s on the road.

It’s all like puzzle that McJames must solve.

“That creates a lot of extra work, which is why I’m so proud to be here,” she said. “But I think, on the flip side, it also allows me to manage my program so it’s the best program to make Megan ski fast.”

McJames learned to ski at Alta when she was 2 years old. She grew up in Park City, where both of her parents were ski instructors, and skied for Park City Ski Team.

She said the Park City community has been a key part of her fundraising efforts. She holds a fundraiser every fall, which contributed a good chunk of her needed yearly funds.

Add in the donors from all over the country, and she has been able to pursue the dream independently for the last five years.

“I have great family and friends and amazing group of donors and sponsors who believe in my story of perseverance and have gotten behind me,” she said.

She will also compete in the slalom in the Pyeongchang Games.

“I think it takes a lot of work for any of the athletes, but I’m really proud of the challenges that I’ve had to overcome to make it to the highest level,” she said. “I’m thankful to be here.”

The post Cut from U.S. team five years ago, McJames perseveres to make 3rd Olympics appeared first on Park Record.

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — They just finished a rigorous two-month Olympic qualification process.

They face one of the biggest competitions of their lives in days.

What did the U.S. ski halfpipe team do as soon as they landed in South Korea?

They skipped over to Japan for some powder skiing.

“It was the deepest turns of my life,” Alex Ferreira — which is saying a lot for someone who grew up in Aspen. “It must have snowed by 3 feet while I was there.”

With the qualification runs 13 days after Opening Ceremonies, the coaches decided a few days away from the Olympics would help reset and refresh the team. While the team had access to a halfpipe, the weather at Aomori Spring Ski Resort in Japan was more conducive to powder turns, which they took full advantage of.

Torin Yater-Wallace, also of Aspen, said the deep snow was more of a boost to his Olympic preparation than any pipe training could be.

“I don’t really ski much halfpipe personally, but I like to think that everything else I ski I grab inspiration from and bring it into my halfpipe skiing,” he said.

Finding inspiration together all over the mountain is nothing new for Yater-Wallace and Ferreira, who have known each other since they were 7 years old. They’ll often go ski the park at Buttermilk or Snowmass together, or, if it’s a powder day, find deep turns at Highlands or Ajax.

Meanwhile, they’ve shared podiums for years — including at this year’s X Games. Now they are at the Olympics for the first time together.

“Sheer raw talent,” Ferreira, 23, said of Yater-Wallace, 22. “He’s unbelievable in the air, unbelievable on his skis. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s so cool to be a part of and watch, and also to be able to ski with him and share all those great moments.”

Yater-Wallace — whose journey back from injury, illness and family struggles was recently documented in the film “Back to Life” — has seen a new mental strength from his longtime friend Ferreira.

“Everybody has similar tricks and similar runs, but when it comes to riding under pressure, that’s where it really comes down to mental strength, and Alex has adapted into a stronger person mentally over the past year and a half and is skiing amazing,” he said.

Anyone’s gold

U.S. teammate David Wise, 27, is the reigning Olympic and X Games gold medalist, but Yater-Wallace, Ferreira and Crested Butte’s Aaron Blunck, 21, all could easily land on the podium of the Feb. 22 finals.

Blunck said Wise has a great run — but so do the other three Americans, as well as the Canadians and New Zealanders.

“Yeah, Dave is the defending gold medalist, the X Games gold medalist, but that doesn’t mean he’s won every competition this year,” Blunck said “In my eyes, he’s good but he’s not the best. No one will ever be the best halfpipe skier because everyone could always win at any given point.”

Ed Stoner is the director of content for Swift Communications. He is covering the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, focusing on athletes from Swift’s communities in Colorado, Utah, California and Nevada.

The post After powder days in Japan, U.S. halfpipe skiers get down to business in South Korea appeared first on Park Record.

BONGPYEONG, South Korea — Eagle snowboarder Jake Pates qualified into the halfpipe finals Tuesday, delivering a big second run when he needed it.

“I was super happy to just land to clean one,” Pates said. “Pretty nerve-racking not getting the first one down. You only get two. You’ve got to land that last one.”

Pates said he took a moment after the first run to clear his head, put in his headphones and tune out all the distractions.

“I was definitely stressed going into the second run,” he said. “I did a little bit of meditation at the top, put some good tunes in and got myself hyped up again.”

The 19-year-old Ski and Snowboard Club Vail alumnus will now compete in Wednesday’s final — along with the other three Americans, Shaun White, Ben Ferguson and Chase Josey.

White recorded the top score of the first run of qualifying with a score of 93.25.

“Honestly, oddly enough I was a little nervous,” White said. “There’s such a build up to get to the Olympics, people forget you still have to qualify to get to the final.”

He topped that on his second run with a near-perfect 98.50.

“I started seeing everybody put in these great runs and I figured I would just kind of step it up,” he said. “They motivated me to send it on that last one.”

Minturn resident and Vail Mountain School graduate Rakai Tait, who is competing for New Zealand, his father’s home country, failed to qualify for Wednesday’s final, ending 26th. He put together a solid first run, but was unable to land his final trick. He was riding a board from his sponsor, Minturn-based Weston Snowboards.

He’ll watch Wednesday’s final and the rest of the Games, staying until the Closing Ceremonies.

“It’s been amazing,” 19-year-old Tait said of the Olympic experience. “Just the honor of representing New Zealand has been incredible and just all the support from all different communities that I’m a part of, it’s been awesome and unbelievable.”

The post Eagle’s Jake Pates makes finals of Olympic halfpipe competition appeared first on Park Record.

BOKWANG PHOENIX PARK, South Korea — Casey Andringa didn’t even make the U.S. Ski and Snowboard national moguls team last spring.

Nine months later, the Ski and Snowboard Club Vail skier finished fifth in the Olympics — the best result of any American.

In between, he lived in a camper called “the Viking” with his brother, Jesse, moving from Whistler to Mount Hood to Steamboat, intensely focusing on becoming a better moguls skier — training, eating well and going to sleep early.

“There were a jillion steps between there and this point right here,” he said in the finish area Monday after the nighttime competition. “And it just all went perfectly to get me to this point.”

He had to perform well at the Team Selection event in December. He won both races, earning a spot at World Cup events in Calgary and Deer Valley.

He had to place highly in Calgary and Deer Valley. He finished seventh and fifth against the best moguls skiers in the world.

Those results gave him a spot on the four-man U.S. men’s Olympic moguls team.

“So many things had to align and he had to ski his best every single comp,” said Jesse Andringa. “It was such a long shot that (the Olympics) was in the back of our heads. But that’s kind of what drove us every day, and the thought that Casey would make the Olympics kind of pushed us to work out harder than we’ve ever worked out and trained harder than we ever trained.”

On Tuesday, Andringa, 22, who lives and trains in Vail in the winter, had to still qualify for the finals of the men’s moguls event. He did, finishing with the best score in the qualification round.

He advanced through the first final, then the second final. In the third final, he was among six men vying for an Olympic medal.

In a bold bid for Olympic gold, he decided to add more difficulty to his bottom air, attempting a cork 10 with a truck driver grab. But he didn’t quite stick the landing.

“It was definitely the hardest run I’ve ever thrown and I knew that it was going to take that,” he said. “I’d rather go for it, go for broke and miss it, than just kind of lay up and be sitting in fourth because I had more to give.”

Andringa’s Ski and Snowboard Club Vail coach Riley Campbell was in the crowd providing support. He said it’s very unusual for a moguls skier to add in difficulty to their normal air package in the middle of a competition.

“It was a gamble,” Campbell said. “I think if you find yourself in the super final at the Olympics, you ski for gold.”

Andringa had landed the trick in training, but he had never done it in a competition.

“That’s not really something you do,” Andringa said. “Most people train their tricks a lot. But I knew that if I wanted to get on the podium I was going to have to land that trick right there. And so I said, ‘Screw it, I’m going to go for it.’ And, you know, I gave it my 100 percent because there there was nothing more for me to do out there.”

Despite his whirlwind of success over the past few months, Andringa says he won’t be leaving his camper days behind.

“The best the most fun time I’ve ever had my whole life was those two months, three months living in a camper, hanging out with friends, just keeping it simple,” he said. “And so I guess every opportunity that I get like that, I’m going to take that over whatever else there is.”

The post Casey Andringa goes big, but comes up just short appeared first on Park Record.

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — These Olympics — Sarah Schleper’s fifth — are so far her favorite.

She’s been pin trading in the athlete village, dancing Gangnam Style in the Opening Ceremonies with her Mexico teammates and doing interviews about her Day of the Dead-themed ski suits.

As for the competition, the ultra-competitive Schleper admits winning a gold medal would be nothing short of a miracle. In her last World Cup race, the Lenzerheide, Switzerland, giant slalom in January, she finished nine seconds behind the leader in the first run.

But she has other goals for Pyeongchang. To represent her adopted country of Mexico. To help build up the ski racing program in Mexico. To inspire the kids that she trains as a ski coach. To complete her comeback from an ACL tear in June. And just to race — she still loves ski racing.

“I think it’s just the participation in the Olympics is such an incredible feat in itself,” she said.

She was supposed to carry the flag in Opening Ceremonies, but a last-minute change of plan gave those responsibilities to a Mexican Nordic skier.

“They were like, ‘Oh, apparently he’s more Mexican because he was born in Mexico and he speaks better Spanish,’” she said.

But Schleper, 38, doesn’t feel like any less of a Mexican after growing up in Vail and becoming a Mexican citizen in 2014 (her husband, Federico Gaxiola de la Lama, is Mexican).

She retired from the U.S Ski Team in 2011 with one World Cup win and three other podiums. She mounted a comeback with Team Mexico, but was unable to secure a spot in the Sochi Olympics because the paperwork wasn’t done in time.

‘Extremely competitive’

She’s now back in the Olympics for the first time since competing for the U.S. in 2010 in Vancouver, where she finished 14th in giant slalom and 16th in slalom.

She also competed in Nagano, Japan, in 1998; Salt Lake City in 2002; and Torino, Italy in 2006.

She’ll compete in the giant slalom, which was postponed to Thursday due to high winds at Yongpyong Alpine Centre on Monday.

Her husband, her 10-year-old son, Lasse, and her 4-year-old daughter, Resi, are here in South Korea to cheer her on.

“She’s extremely competitive and you can still see that,” said U.S. racer Resi Stiegler, a longtime friend who is the namesake for Schleper’s daughter. “She’s turning 39 in a week and she has two kids and she’s racing down these injected hills that some days I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know if I can do this.’”

The team’s race suits, designed by team leader and six-time Olympic skier Prince Hubertus of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, have been gaining notoriety among the Olympic press corps — just as the team’s mariachi suits did in 2014.

“He’s a good friend of my Mexican family,” Schleper said. “He’s the reason I’m Mexican because he was the one who was like, ‘You should switch to the Mexican team.’ And so we started right away trying to do it. He’s been probably one of my biggest supporters.”

Coaching and racing, too

Twenty-three years after she made her World Cup debut in her hometown of Vail, the same passion for skiing burns in Schleper.

“I love skiing, and I love ski racing,” she said.

She’s been working with a coach, Lyndsay Strange, and has competed in two World Cup this year after blowing her knee last summer at Mount Hood. She made a plea to friends and family to help fund her ski racing this year, which has helped defray the costs of this effort.

Schleper will be the oldest woman in the field in the giant slalom Thursday. There are five skiers in the field born in 2001, the year Schleper turned 22.

Schleper has been racing with kids that young for a few years — and coaching them at the same time as part of various clubs and camps.

“I’ve seen her coach, and she’s racing there with them and then she’s training with them and she’s coaching,” Stiegler said. “It’s this back and forth thing that’s kind of a little bit more modern and weird for some people, but she’s changed the game for a lot of those girls. I’ve seen 10 girls with her that love skiing, and she makes it fun for them.”

Not done yet

One young girl that she raced with was Mikaela Shiffrin — they were U.S. teammates when Shiffrin made her World Cup debut at age 15 in 2011; Schleper retired from the team later that year. Shiffrin faces expectations of being one of the biggest stars of the Pyeongchang Games.

“She just amazes me,” Schleper said of Shiffrin. “I mean, I kind of knew. Even at the beginning you could tell just how focused she was and dedicated. And she did everything right.”

After 20 years, Schleper isn’t saying goodbye to the Olympics, or the challenges of ski racing — even as she raises two kids. She’s thinking of competing in 2022 in China, which would be Olympics No. 6.

“I would probably focus more on speed just because it’s easier,” she said. “Although it is more dangerous.”

The post Sarah Schleper, competing for Mexico, has more to accomplish in fifth Olympics appeared first on Park Record.

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Tess Johnson skied two really good runs Sunday.

Actually two and a half.

But with a bobble on the landing of her second jump in the second final, Johnson’s 2018 Winter Olympics came to an end.

The 17-year-old Edwards mogul skier landed off-balance, raising her right ski, and giving her a 12th-place finish in her Olympic debut.

“I had a lot of fun out there today, and although I’m fairly disappointed with my mistake on the bottom, I still had an amazing time,” she said.

The finals took place under the lights, in light snow and bitter cold at Bokwang Phoenix Park.

Johnson still had to qualify for the finals after finishing a disappointing 22nd out of 30 during the first round of qualification on Friday.

She easily did that Sunday, finishing with the best score of 20 skiers in the second round of qualification.

“That was probably the best moment of the day just to feel that redemption from two days ago and kind of tackle that demon,” she said.

The Americans came into the finals with four of the 20 competitors, but at the end of the night, none of them finished in the top six.

Jaelin Kauf was seventh, Keaton McCargo was eighth, Johnson was 12th and Morgan Schild 15th.

“I think we had the potential for any of us to be podium tonight, and we all just made little mistakes that cost us, and that’s super frustrating,” McCargo said.

The team is young — McCargo is the oldest of the four women at 22 — so they will have opportunities to improve over the next four years.

“I fully expect all of us to continue working and pushing to meet our goals in 2022,” Johnson said.

Johnson will stick around for the remainder of the Olympics. She wants to attend as many events as possible, including the snowboard halfpipe.

From walking in the opening ceremonies to competing in front of huge crowds, Johnson said the experience was amazing.

“One that I will never forget,” she said.

The post Edwards moguls skier Tess Johnson finishes 12th in Olympics appeared first on Park Record.

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — When Alice McKennis made her Olympic debut eight years ago in Vancouver, she was just 20 years old and a newcomer to top-level ski racing.

The road to her second Olympics has taken eight years, lined with major injuries and years of rehab — but with a determination to keep pushing forward.

“Two knee injuries, elbow injury, six surgeries along the way,” she said. “I missed a lot of time. There’s been a lot of times where I thought it was the end of my career and that I wasn’t going to be able to have this opportunity again to compete at the Olympics.”

She suffered a left tibial plateau fracture in 2011, then shattered her right tibial plateau into 30 pieces in 2013 in a devastating injury during a downhill at Garmisch in Germany. Doctors put 11 screws and a metal plate in her leg, and she has an 11-inch scar that she nicknamed “The Shark.”

The injury no longer affects her physically while racing, but the mental aspect can be hard to overcome — including after teammate Jackie Wiles tore her ACL earlier this month in a crash on the same Garmisch track.

“Sometimes mentally it is hard to overcome that a little bit, even though it’s been five years,” she said.

McKennis, who won World Cup downhill in 2013, is now seeing the best results of her career in her other discipline, super-G. A 15th-place finish at Val D’Isere in December was her best ever on the World Cup in that discipline.

“She’s skiing fast and strong,” said Chip White, head coach of women’s speed skiers of the U.S. Ski Team. “She’s disappointed with bad results but takes responsibility when things go wrong and knows that she can do better. And she’s just, in my mind, very focused.”

McKennis said she’s very pleased with her super-G skiing, to the point where she feels it’s just as strong as her downhill.

“I’ve progressed really well this year and made a pretty steep trajectory on my results. I’ve never really been a super-G skier, and then this year I’ve been scoring (top 30) in almost every World Cup,” she said.

McKennis is a native of New Castle who grew up skiing at Sunlight, and later trained with Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club under the guidance of Olympian Casey Puckett.

When she’s not traveling for skiing, she lives in the Vail Valley. Her sister lives in Meeker.

She is likely to compete in the super-G Feb. 17 and the downhill Feb. 21.

White sees her as a legitimate medal threat, not only in the downhill, but also the super-G.

“Absolutely, especially because this course is right up her alley,” he said.

The post After battling injuries, Alice McKennis returns for her second Olympics appeared first on Park Record.

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Seven years ago, Toby Dawson helped Pyeongchang secure the Winter Olympics with a stirring speech at the International Olympic Committee Session in Durban, South Africa.

“My name is Toby Dawson,” he told the IOC in 2011. “My name is also Kim Bong-seok. I am a freestyle skier and I am an Olympian. I am a Korean by birth, yet I am also an American.”

He said hosting the Olympics would improve the lives of future generations of South Koreans, giving them “the same chance that I received when I moved to America in 1981 — the chance to hope, the chance to participate, the chance to excel and the chance to succeed.”

On Thursday, Dawson stood in the finish area of the moguls course at the Winter Olympics, coaching the South Koreans on their home snow.

The dream was finally a reality.

And you can be certain the home crowd will explode in celebration if Dawson’s skiers are able to win a medal in skiing — their first ever — Sunday or Monday in the womens and mens moguls finals.

“That would be another great feather in the cap, to bring a medal after helping bring the Olympics to Korea,” Dawson said Thursday.

In Winter Olympic history, South Korea has won 42 medals in short-track speed skating, nine in speed skating, and two in figure skating, but none in any other sport, including skiing.

A podium is within reach for the team after six years with Dawson at the helm. He has five skiers in the Olympics — up from three in Sochi, Russia, four years ago. Choi Jae-woo on the men’s side has several top-5 finishes on the World Cup, and Seo Jung-hwa has landed in the top 10.

“These were the same group of athletes I started working with when I first came here to Korea, and to get them all qualified in the Olympics was a feat in itself,” he said.

from vail to torino

As for Dawson himself, it’s another step in a remarkable journey.

He was adopted at age 3 by Vail residents Mike and Deborah Dawson. He learned to ski at 4 years old, and began competing in moguls through the Vail program run by Scott and Patti Kauf (whose daughter, Jaelin, is a favorite for a moguls medal at these Olympics). He attended school from Red Sandstone Elementary to Minturn Middle School to Battle Mountain High School, where he played varsity soccer for four years.

But moguls were truly where he excelled. He made the U.S. Ski Team at age 19, and won his first World Cup in 2001.

His shining Olympic moment came at Torino in 2006, where he won bronze.

Dawson became in overnight sensation in South Korea, the country of his birth. His image was splashed across the world, which led to a 2007 reunion with his birth father, and later his birth mother. The family had lost their 3-year-old son at a crowded market in the city of Busan.

“I’ve been waiting a long time, father,” Dawson said at the 2007 reunion, according to news stories at the time.

Celebrity status

Four years later, Dawson was brought on as a last-minute speaker at the IOC Session in Durban, South Africa, in 2011, to help put Pyeongchang’s bid over the top. The South Korean city beat out Munich, Germany, and Annecy, France, for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games.

As part of that successful bid, he met members of the Korea Ski Association, who convinced him to take the job as the national team’s moguls coach. Dawson did it with an eye toward this moment — winning medals for South Korea in Pyeongchang in 2018.

Dawson now lives in Seoul, but his life is pretty similar to when he was an athlete, chasing the snow and attending training camps and competitions through much of the year. He’s only in Korea one or two weeks a month at the most, but he continues to enjoy celebrity status around the country.

“It’s kind of wild sometimes,” he said. “You’ll just be walking around, and people recognize me. My story has been around for a while. I’ll be riding the subway or something and people ask for a signature or come over and say ‘hi’ or want to take a picture. It’s pretty funny.”

He’s not totally fluent in Korea, but he speaks and understands it pretty well. He talks to his athletes in English, many of whom have lived or studied in the U.S. or Canada.

Support from home

His Vail family, including his brother and his mom, are coming from Colorado to support Toby and his athletes. He’ll also have some longtime Vail friends competing in these Olympics, too — he was in the same grade as fellow Vail native and Battle Mountain grad Sarah Schleper, who is competing for Mexico in alpine skiing. And South Korean hockey player Mike Testwuide grew up on the same cul-de-sac where Dawson lived in Vail.

Though he hasn’t been back to Vail for a few years, he still appreciates all the great support he’s received through the years from the community.

“I love Vail,” he said. “It’s a place I’ll always call home.”

Meanwhile, Dawson and his athletes are focused on reaching new heights as the nation of South Korea watches intently.

“It’s pretty exciting, and I think that a lot of people are going to come out and support the athletes — athletics are a big part of Korean,” he said. “I expect a lot of good fan base, definitely pushing these athletes to their limit. Hopefully they can ski well and have a good competition.”

Ed Stoner is the director of content for Swift Communications. He is covering the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, focusing on athletes from Swift’s communities in Colorado, Utah, California and Nevada.

The post After helping South Korea secure Olympics, Toby Dawson eyes medal as coach appeared first on Park Record.