DEER VALLEY FREESTYLE WORLD CUP - 2010
by Paul Maraschiello

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I headed to Park City, UT to cover the Visa Freestyle International World Cup. Deer Valley is one of the best ski areas in America and I love to cover events there and ski the excellent runs at the world-class ski resort.

ACCOMMODATIONS
I was staying at the Chateau Après Lodge in the heart of Park City. It is centrally located one block off main street, only 150 yards from the lifts at the Park City Resort. My room had a double bed, TV, couch, and table and a private bath with shower. It was defiantly "no frills" but was clean and very comfortable. Room rates are very affordable starting at $105 for a room for 1 or 2 people. This is one of the best lodging bargains in Park City. In the morning there was a complementary continental breakfast with juice, fruit, cereal, muffins, coffee, tea, milk and more. There was a fireplace in the center of the lobby which was a focal point for guests after a hard day of skiing. Chateau Après offers price conscious skiers and snowboarders a dorm bed for $40.00 per night plus tax, per person which includes breakfast. Girls dorms are available from Jan 19th-Feb 1st only. If you want a clean, friendly low-cost place to stay in Park City, I can heartily recommend the Chateau Après Lodge. Call (800) 357-3556 and tell them you read about them in the Ski Bum News.



SKIING
I was excited about hitting the slopes and getting a few runs in before the competition began, so I headed over to Nabob for a couple of warm-up runs. Then I decided to take a run on Stein's Way, one of my favorite expert runs at Deer Valley. It is steep and the snow is usually well groomed. I had a good time riding up the Mayflower chair and speeding down Stein's Way. There was evidence of new construction near the Empire chair. The moguls were as big as ever on the double black diamond run under the chair. This run is enough to test the metal of the most experienced skiers. If you want bumps, empire is the place.



AERIALS
After logging as many runs as I could, I skied over to the aerial venue and watched the practice and qualifying jumps. Many of the athletes I knew were there and I delighted in watching them launch themselves into the air. One thing I could not help notice was the preponderance of Full Tilt ski boots. Which are based on the old Raichle design.



The finals were scheduled for Friday night under the lights and the competition was nothing less than SPECTACULAR.



Skiers were fine-tuning their skills for the coming Olympics and vying for spots on their respective Olympic Teams, so the competition was intense. A crowd of almost 5,000 spectators were on hand to see these high-flying aerialists land their jumps. With the Olympic Games so near, the athlete were doing their best to nail down a spot on the Olympic roster.



For the men's Aeirial, it was Anton Kushnir of Belarus in 1st place, Guangpu Qi of China was 2nd and Dmitri Dashinski, also of Belarus, in 3rd. (He was the Silver Medal winner in the last Olympics). It was a happy night on the podium for the Belarus Team.



Lanky Dylan Ferguson was the top finisher for the US Team with a 6th place finish, with "Speedy" Peterson attempting the "Hurricane" but missing the landing due to equipment problems.



USA's best finisher Dylan Ferguson, threw a double full, full, full, which is a quad twisting triple back flip. The US Men's Team had problems but the crowd cheered on them on, as well as cheering all the athletes who demonstrated their death-defying skills by soaring high above the heads of the spectators, wowing them with their skills and spills.



The winner on the podium for the women was Lydia Lassila. This Australian was followed by Mengtao Xu in 2nd and Nina Li, both from China. If Lydia had faltered, the entire podium would have been Chinese.



I enjoyed chatting with Mat DePeters who hails from Hamburg, NY and has a great sense of humor and meeting some of the other up-and-coming members of the US Team.



MOGULS
The mogul competition was also held under the lights on Saturday. It was nice to see

Olympic Gold Medal winner Donna Weinbrecht and my old friend from my Killington days, Bobby Aldighieri at this event again. Jonny Moseley was one of the commentators for the bump contest and there were thousands of spectators enjoying these bumpers fly through the moguls, doing back flips, 1080s and D-spins as they smoked the course, with top skiers doing 2 inverted jumps while completing their run in under 25 seconds while executing flawless turns. It was mind-blowing to see these guys and gals do their stuff.



One competitor from Kazakhstan threw a front flip in the bumps and that was a girl!

On the podium for the women, Jennifer Heil, Canada was 1st, USA's Heather McPhie, Park City, was 2nd, Michelle Roark, Denver was 3rd and teammates Hannah Kearney, Norwich, VT, was 4th with Shannon Bahrke, Tahoe City finishing in 5th place. This was quite a showing for the US Women's Mogul Team.



Guilbaut Colas of France took the top spot on the podium for the men, followed by Australia's Dale Begg-Smith in 2nd and Alexandre Bilodeau of Canada came in 3rd which made his former mogul coach Bobby Aldigheri very proud.



It was a great competition where athletes pushed the envelope and demonstrated their prowess one again under the lights at the Deer Valley Ski Resort.







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