Home

Steamboat Springs — Arapahoe Basin’s loss turned into Steamboat Springs’ gain.

The final event for the NorAm Cup will start today at Mayer’s Mogul Run on Voo Doo ski run at Steamboat Ski Area.

Qualification rounds start at 10 a.m. today and Friday, with finals scheduled to begin at about 2 p.m. Today is a singles moguls day, and Friday is a dual moguls day.

The event originally was scheduled to be held at Arapahoe Basin, but the ski area couldn’t get its run up and going because a lack of snow depth.

With the Steamboat course already playing host to the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in December and serving as the training ground for the U.S. Freestyle Moguls Ski Team in early February — the team then won three medals in Vancouver, British Columbia — Steamboat was the perfect choice.

“We were psyched to get it,” freestyle ski coach Nate Bird said.

The competition is a just a step below World Cup competition and should feature more than 80 top up-and-coming moguls skiers. Most of the skiers are on their country’s national development team or right on the cusp of being there.

The majority of the field will include skiers from the United States, Canada and Japan. Sev­eral other countries also will have participants. 

Steamboat will have 11 skiers in the event. Lane Stoltzner, Brittany Loweree, Alexa Stein, Becky Miller, Alissa Pinkoski, Kiki Adams, Alison Crowe, Re­ed Snyderman, Rob Burden, Dal­ton Lee and Michael De­­gran­dis will compete.

The Steamboat contingent should have a good chance to do well. This past weekend at a NorAm event at Apex Mountain Resort in Penticton, British Col­umbia, Burden, Snyderman, Loweree, Miller and Stein made the finals, which hasn’t happened all year. Snyderman was the top finisher, in fourth place.

“He’s skiing hot,” Bird said.

Rob Day, the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club NorAm freestyle coach, said having the event on the skiers’ home course should benefit the team.

He said the goal is for all the skiers to make the finals of their event. Especially after the event in Canada, he said he expects that to happen.

“That’s really important to these athletes,” Day said. “They know this course. They know the trail, so there should be no surprises. It’s a pretty big competition booster to have it on your home course.”