It’s been a colossal season for Dreadnaught Ski Racing at Kimberley Alpine Resort, but this past week’s hosting of the FIS World Criterium Masters, was the crown jewel of not just this season, but one of the biggest events in the volunteer-based group’s history.
It was certainly the most international, drawing around 250 athletes from 15 different countries for an event that is akin to a world cup for alpine ski racing.
Donna Briggs of Dreadnaught Ski Racing, was chairman of the Criterium. She said that the vast majority of the athletes here had never been to the Kootenay Zone before, and she heard a ton of great feedback from everyone.
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“I think everybody enjoyed the hospitality, I know lots of people commented on how friendly everyone was here and what a beautiful part of the world this is and just really enjoyed the town and some of the dining experiences they had,” Briggs said.
As is so often the case, after a year of rather lackluster snowfall, all of a sudden as the races were getting well underway, Kimberley got a massive dump of snow, making things difficult to race organizers.
“Mother Nature really did not cooperate at all,” Briggs said. “As the locals would know, the moment we try and plan a speed event, like Super G, as I said to one of the Italian racers, who was asking me if he’ll be racing Super G or GS tomorrow, I’m like one moment you look out the window and it’s a blizzard, and literally two minutes later you’d look out the window and it was blue sky.
“There was no predictability to the weather last week and so that makes it really difficult. 90 centimetres of snow. — I said to him, we haven’t had 90 centimetres of snow in three days since I’ve lived here and I’ve lived here for 20 something years.”
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She said that fortunately, due to their core team of experienced volunteers who collectively have a background spanning Olympic events and World Cups, they didn’t end up losing events. Some had to be compressed, with two categories running at once, for example, but the full schedule of racing was able to go ahead, despite the storm.
“In the end I think everybody was super happy,” Briggs said. “It was nice that for the last three days we had bluebird skies and sunshine, sort of what we wanted to showcase to the world. I think people’s parting memory will be that and some of them too maybe took advantage of skiing around the mountain and just checking it out when we had those days where we had to postpone races.”
At one point on Monday during the storm, Briggs said that she and about 20 others were on the main run digging B-netting out of waist-deep snow so that they could move it in and run the other events that needed to run.
“I think in a year like this just to be able to pull off racing, just with all the things that Mother Nature’s throwing at people just is a testament to the experience of our crew,” she said. “It was memorable. We all were laughing at the end of the day after about it anyways.”
Not only were there people from 15 different countries, there was a huge range in age in competitors — from mid 30s to late 80s — and numerous interesting individuals and storylines.
“I think the oldest person who competed was 89, it was one of the ladies and she was amazing.” Briggs said. “Just the fact that people are out there racing in their mid to late 80s and they’re not finishing in end of the pack either, in their overall time. They may be in their own category and they may win a gold in their own category, but they’re beating people that are two categories down.”
One individual, Peter Krassel from Austria, had been a ski coach at KAR back when it was still known as North Star Mountain in 1966/67. Now in his 80s, Krassel raced throughout the week despite the insane snowfall and the airline misplacing his skis.
In a post from Jane Davies in Dreadnaught Ski Racing’s Facebook page, Davies said that the Austrian team had their skis delivered by a local volunteer and were so grateful they made a donation to go towards young Kimberley ski racers.
Briggs said that, while Kimberley has established itself as a premier destination for ski racing, this event definitely gave the town and region some international exposure as a great ski destination.
At the end of the season, Dreadnaught will host athletes from provincial teams from across the country to train for the NorAm finals taking place at Panorama the following week.