Ski Resorts
Cypress Mountain Taking Olympic Heat
Ouch. It looks like the World Cup ski and snowboarding events held at Vancouver’s Cypress Mountain over the past couple of weeks did not garner many rave reviews from fans or athletes. Cypress will host a variety of snowboard and ski events during the 2010 Olympic games.
Over at the Toronto Star, Olympic blogger Randy Starkman called recent pre-Olympic events held at Cypress a “painful excercise” (read the blog entry here). According to Starkman, the mountain was not exactly receptive to athletes, posting signs like “No Access for Athletes” in the main lodge during events at one point. “The officials who run the mountain made it clear over and over again – especially to the athletes and coaches – that they didn’t want them around because they were interfering with normal business operations,” he wrote.
In the Globe and Mail, athletes bemoaned the conditions and the mountain’s preparation (one snowboard alpine event had to be cancelled when the course couldn’t be set up in time). One Canadian athlete called the halfpipe “whack.”
Obviously Cypress, an extremely busy mountain, needs to stay operational during events like this. It’s a business, after all, and they can’t just shut down for a couple of weekends mid-season. Hopefully they learned from this experience and will apply the take-aways when the big show comes to town in 2010.
Discussion
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It doesn’t help with the bad snow we’ve been having… resorts are struggling to survive.
I’m surprised to hear Cypress has been so rude to athletes though. Shame on you, Cypress!