Out of the limelight
SAN JOSE, Calif. – U.S. Alpine skiers won an unprecedented nine World Cup medals in six days last month, but not many Americans took notice.
Like swimmers, runners and gymnasts, ski racers have but one chance every four years to showcase their talents when it comes to the short attention spans of Americans. They compete in a vacuum until those magical two weeks of the Olympic Games.
Ted Morris, vice president of marketing for the U.S. Ski Association, said World Cup racing in Colorado gets a small share of the television market. “Then every four years all of a sudden we’re doing a 30 rating,” he said.
Such a situation left many wondering if the American streak came 10 months too late.
No question, the team’s profile would have dramatically increased if the Americans had won nine medals at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. But the team stumbled its way to two medals and a lot of bad karma after Bode Miller flopped in all five of his events. The iconoclastic skier seemed more interested in Italian bars than raising the bar for American skiing.
Morris, though, said even negative publicity helped generate interest. He said twice as many Americans knew Miller’s name after the Olympics than before.
“A large percentage of those people hate his guts,” Morris said. “I don’t care if they love him or hate him. It’s good for our sport.”
Nova Lanktree, an executive vice president at sports-management agency CSMG Sports, said the publicity buildup before the Turin Games did the skiers a disservice.
“The Olympics aren’t about how much money people can make in the marketplace afterward,” she said. “It’s about winning medals. The window is very short. But if you lengthen it through a false sense of selling a product… it slams the window shut.”
Lanktree said the recent round of success won’t help sell the sport in the short term because World Cup races are “non-events to the general public.”
U.S. Alpine director Jesse Hunt, however, embraces the longer view. He hopes this season’s results will lead to something special by the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.
“You don’t see it overnight,” he said of building an identifiable team. “It’s that consistency” that makes the difference.
“They are paying their dues and developing their talent and skills,” Lanktree said. “They still have something to sell to the corporate world.”
Starting with Miller’s super-G victory on Dec.15, American competitors went on a tear in which five racers finished in the top three over the course of a week.
The team showed its versatility by placing in the downhill, super-G, giant slalom and slalom. During the streak, Lindsey Kildow, Julia Mancuso, Steve Nyman and Miller posted victories.
“You need to have that confidence, you need to believe,” Hunt said. “When their teammates are breaking through and doing well, that gives them that little edge.”
Kildow, who won a downhill at Val d’Isere, France, for the second consecutive season, said she hoped the recent success would give American audiences something to follow other than the NBA.
“We don’t get in fistfights or anything, but it’s pretty cool that we’re going 80 miles per hour,” she said.
Kildow, who struggled at the 2006 Olympics after a harrowing crash during practice, has five podium finishes heading into races in Austria this weekend. (The men compete in Switzerland.)
With 18 overall World Cup medals, Kildow, 22, passed Picabo Street, her childhood idol and an Olympic champion.
The U.S. team has cooled off since the string ended Dec.20. But the skiers hope to regain momentum for the world championships, Feb. 3-18 in Are, Sweden. A successful showing probably won’t resonate with American audiences though.