Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs — Some of the top freestyle skiers in the world will come to Steamboat Springs this Friday and Saturday for the first of three stops in the Papa John's Bumps and Jumps tour.

"Last year the Colorado event was held at Copper Mountain, so we are really excited to be back in Steamboat this year," Bumps and Jumps spokeswoman Renny Cella said.

She said Steamboat's commitment to the sport of freestyle and the Park Smalley Freestyle Complex make it a natural favorite for the Bumps and Jumps format and the skiers who come here to compete.

This will be the third time the local resort has hosted a Bumps and Jumps stop and continues a long string of major top-level competitions here in Steamboat.

The resort hosted the U.S. Grand Nationals last year. Steamboat was also the site of Bumps and Jumps, the Jonny Moseley Invitational and the World Cup Tour in 1999.

The Bumps and Jumps tour is a three-stop event that focuses on two of the sport's most popular competitions moguls and aerials.

The tour is scheduled to make stops in Steamboat this December, Lake Placid in February and Heavenly Lake Tahoe in March.

All three of the events feature a day of moguls skiing and a day of aerial competition. This weekend's events will begin on Friday with the Bumps portion on the Voodoo ski run at the Steamboat Ski area.

Top international competitors such as Jean-Luc Brassard, Pierre Forget and Dominick Gauthier of Canada are expected to be on hand. Austrian skier Adrian Costa and French skier Johann Gregoire are also regulars at the Steamboat events.

The local favorites will include Steamboat's own Bobby Aldighieri as well as U.S. Ski Team members Evan Dybvig and Toby Dawson.

That event is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Friday with the qualifying rounds. The event is open to any mogul skier, however, only the top 16 skiers will advance to the finals, which will be a part of the television broadcast.

The top skiers will then battle in the finals, which are set for noon on Friday. There will be an awards ceremony following the competition at the bottom of the course honoring the top three finishers.

On Saturday, the Bumps and Jumps event will continue as the aerialists take to the hills just a few hundred feet from the moguls course.

This event will feature an elite field of competitors who have been invited to come to Steamboat. Jumping will start at 10 a.m. with the finals set for noon.

Topping the list of skiers who are expected to compete will be current Bumps and Jumps champion Dmitri Dashinski from Belarus. He not only won last year's title, but also the 1998-1999 Bumps and Jumps crown.

Last year Dashinski was second in Copper and second in Heavenly.

Other top skiers who could be on the final competitors list include a strong group of Canadians led by David Belhumeur and Andy Capicik. The top Americans should include Eric Bergoust, Brian Currutt, Joe Pack and Britt Swartley.

The skiers will compete in at least two one-jump rounds. The top five competitors will advance into the third and final round. They will be judged on one final jump.

The Papa John's Bumps and Jumps Tour will be televised on both CBS and NBC this season.

The Steamboat events are scheduled to be televised between 2:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. on Dec. 24 on CBS. A more exact time will be announced at a later date it may well depend of the timing of the NFL football game it follows.

Other Bumps and Jumps events will be televised on NBC on Feb. 24 (Lake Placid) and CBS on March 25 (Heavenly).