Explore Steamboat, John F. Russell: Race for the jumps

John F. Russell: Race for the jumps

Sunday, November 18, 2007

John Russell

John Russell's sports column appears Sundays in Steamboat Today. Contact him at 871-4209 or e-mail jrussell@steamboatpilot.com.

Steamboat Springs — Every fall there’s a race in the United States.

The race is not measured in miles. There are no runners, drivers or jockeys. There isn’t even a finish line for the competitors to cross. The race is the unspoken, and unofficial, contest to be the first facility to open a ski jump for the season.

The race’s reward is the pride that comes from a job well done, and knowing that the effort will contribute to young athletes’ futures.

For the past several years, the race has been a dual contest between Steamboat Springs’ Howelsen Hill Ski Area and Park City, Utah. This year, Steamboat won the race when the HS 75 opened for business Friday.

But the real winners were the members of the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club, the members of U.S. Nordic combined team and the women’s special jumping team.

For those athletes, opening a ski jump made the difference between sitting around and waiting and getting back on snow. It means that in the next few weeks, America’s best Nordic athletes will be on par with the competition when World Cup season begins.

In Steamboat, winning the race to open means that our young athletes can get rolling on a new winter season. This year, it only took two weeks for Howelsen to make the transition between training on plastic in the summer to jumping on snow before Thanksgiving.

Just a few years ago, local athletes spent the summer traveling across the country to find plastic-covered jumps for training. The expense and time normally limited the number of jumps that athletes could make during the off-season.

Back then, the race to open took on added importance. The sooner the jumps at Howelsen opened, the sooner athletes in Steamboat Springs could resume their quest to make national and Olympic teams.

These days, the race to open the jumps each fall isn’t as important, but that doesn’t mean opening day isn’t significant for the members of the Winter Sports Club and our national teams.

The truth is that nothing can replace snow or the feeling athletes have when they compete on it.

There’s no doubt that Steamboat’s long-running tradition of producing Olympic athletes will be built in the summer on plastic, but victories will be achieved on the snow in places like Vancouver.

Last week, by making sure the jump at Howelsen Hill was the first to open in the United States, Howelsen Hill’s snowmakers and coaches, who made the snow and took care of all the details of opening a jump for the winter, became unsung heroes. Heroes who measure success with their ability to overcome Mother Nature with man hours and machines — and with the future results of some of Steamboat’s most talented athletes.