The close-knit community of backcountry skiing was in mourning Monday, a day after an avalanche in Washington state killed a prominent judge in the extreme sport plus two other experienced skiers.
Lindsey Vonn from the U.S. has won her fifth consecutive women's World Cup downhill title after finishing third at Saturday's alpine skiing event in Sochi, Russia.
Comcast/NBC will remain the U.S. Olympic network in 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020. But for now, it's time to focus on 2012.
updated: Thu Feb 24 2011 10:21:00
BASE jumpers took the plunge in 2010 during the "New River Gorge Bridge Day Festival" in West Virginia.
Skiers understand the capricious nature of fame in a sport that is largely hidden from public view for years at a time. It's all about timing. (And back stories, too, but that's another matter. And sometimes it's about timing and back stories together). You can win all the races you like, on any mountainside in the world, but unless you win at the Olympics, you are anonymous. Ted Ligety knows all about this.
Want to pile through chest-deep powder in Japan? Find massive air in China? Here's the guide to Asia's downhill thrills.
Lots of people may be cursing the early arrival of winter this year, but the blast of snow is translating into a blast for skiers and snowboarders.
So much for the idea that Lindsey Vonn and the rest of the U.S. ski team would have a down season in the post-Olympic year. Vonn and fellow Olympic champ Ted Ligety both earned decisive victories in World Cup events as the Cup tour made its annual fall pass through North America. Vonn captured the Super G race in Lake Louise, Alberta on Sunday, while Ligety won the giant slalom event on the Birds of Prey course in Beaver Creek, Colo. It marked the first time since 2006 that two U.S. alpine skiers had won World Cup events on the same day.
Alpine skiing superstar Bode Miller is swapping the piste for the tennis court as he attempts to qualify for the U.S. Open championship at Flushing Meadow later this year.
Switzerland's Carlo Janka clinched the overall World Cup title and Ted Ligety of the United States sealed the giant slalom crown in the World Cup finals in Garmisch Partenkirchen on Friday.
With a wink of its eye, Canada brought to close the Winter Olympics by making fun of one the glitches that plagued the first week of the games.
updated: Sun Feb 28 2010 02:49:00
Lindsey Vonn's Olympics come to an end. Alex Thomas wraps up Friday's competition.
American skier Bode Miller failed in his bid for an unprecedented medal haul but the United States will finish the 2010 Winter Olympics on Sunday with a record total after winning gold and silver on Saturday.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- All of Canada is holding its breath for the result of today's men's cross-country 50km mass start.
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- Here was a familiar scene: Bode Miller standing benignly on skis at the side of race course, poles dragging in the snow, a look of vague disappointment on his face. He is wearing a racing helmet and speed suit, but he is as still as the pine trees behind him and the plastic gates that line the mountainside, all dressed up with no place to go.
Despite the adversity faced by competitors living in areas of the world where sub-zero temperatures are uncommon, the history of African athletes competing at the Winter Olympics is surprisingly rich.
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- As massive, wet snowflakes fell on the Creekside alpine racing stadium Friday afternoon, Lindsey Vonn worked an adoring crowd. Autographs here, photos there, always a smile. The hood was pulled up on her white, U.S. Ski team jacket and a hat was yanked down to the top of her eyebrows, but there was no mistaking who was beneath the down and wool. You cannot cover up stardom.
Young German skier Viktoria Rebensburg sprung a huge upset as she claimed gold in the the weather-delayed women's giant slalom at Whistler Creekside on Thursday.
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- Running downhill through the Olympic Alpine Games, with two events left to ski (women's slalom Friday and men's slalom Saturday):
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- Measure these odds: Julia Mancuso is prepared to push out of the start house in the first of two runs of the Olympic giant slalom on Wednesday morning. She is skier No. 18, and at this point in the competition -- bib numbers 16 through 30 -- the racers are sent off every 60 seconds, a shorter interval than originally planned, to hurry the race in bad weather. For the fastest racers, the run takes a little more than 1:15. This means that when one skier is approaching the final pitch of the course, another is starting. Two racers on course at the same time.
Talk about being 21st-century pioneers.
updated: Wed Feb 24 2010 20:07:00
Olympic medalist Nelson Carmichael has some tips on how to bump ski.
WHISTLER, B.C. -- For the first time in a week, it was snowing Tuesday afternoon in the mountains around Whistler. At least it was trying to snow, as dense, wet flakes turned occasionally to rain and then back again to snow, soaking spectators who were leaving the alpine racing stadium after Carlo Janka's victory for Switzerland in the men's giant slalom. It was a return to the conditions that had postponed the start of ski racing for two days at the beginning of the Games, but it was something else, too: Mancuso Weather.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- No man has ever won four Alpine skiing medals at a single Olympics, but Bode Miller is a threat to make history today in the men's giant slalom. Medals will also be handed out in biathlon, Nordic combined, women's ski cross and the men's speedskating.
South Korea's Lee Jung-Su confirmed his reputation as the top men's short-track speedskater at the 2010 Winter Olympics with his second gold medal on Saturday night, while American Apolo Anton Ohno snatched a place in the history books with a last-gasp bronze.
updated: Tue Feb 23 2010 04:26:00
Apolo Anton Ohno becomes the most decorated American Winter Olympian. Alex Thomas reports.
The bronze medalist hits the slopes - and the books
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- Bode Miller woke up on Sunday morning feeling "pretty whipped," as he put it. His crash a few days earlier, during a downhill training run for the men's super combined, had left him not so much sore as out of alignment. "I flew 35 feet through the air and landed on my hip," he said. "I'm fine, but it kind of feels like I'm crooked."
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Forget the NFL, and apologies to baseball:
Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway claimed his first Olympic gold medal with victory in the men's super-G at Whistler Creekside on Friday.
WHISTLER, B.C. -- The truth? It's tempting to say that we - those of us disseminate our words through magazines, websites, newspapers and television -- missed on Julia Mancuso. That we spent the better part of a year hyping Lindsey Vonn as the star-in-waiting of the 2010 Olympics and cruelly overlooked Mancuso, whose giant slalom gold from Turin in 2006 gave her one more Olympic medal than Vonn had won in two trips to the Games.
updated: Thu Feb 18 2010 19:10:00
Vonn, White and Davis all win gold for the U.S. in Vancouver. CNN's Alex Thomas reports.
Lindsey Vonn of the United States lived up to her billing as the golden girl of the Winter Olympics with a dominant victory in the women's downhill at Whistler Creekside on Wednesday.
The skiing champ proves that her injured shin won't get in the way of her dreams
Eight months before the Vancouver Games, Lindsey Vonn skis the Olympic downhill in her mind. She is in a subterranean workout room at the Red Bull soccer club's training center in Salzburg, Austria, balanced with each foot on a nylon slack line suspended three feet off the pebbled orange rubber floor. She is crouched in an aerodynamic tuck, her hands thrust out in front of her chin. Trainer Oliver Saringer speaks gently into her right ear: You're on the downhill course at Whistler .... Vonn closes her eyes and begins shifting her weight rhythmically from one foot to the other as if executing high-speed turns on a Canadian mountainside more than 5,000 miles away.
updated: Wed Feb 17 2010 16:20:00
Bode Miller and Seth Wescott collect medals for the U.S. CNN's Alex Thomas reports.
It's a familiar story -- we look at the athletes' bodies and they seem unusual somehow. We think about what lengths they might have gone to in order to achieve such an abnormal build. Whatever it is they did, we wonder: Is it natural? Is it healthy?
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- Bode Miller's record-breaking bronze medal in Wednesday's Olympic downhill was even more impressive than it initially appeared. Hours after the race, Miller's uncle, Mike Kenney, who is also a coach with the U.S. Ski Team, told SI.com that Miller had undergone arthroscopic knee surgery shortly after Christmas, barely seven weeks before Monday's race. Miller's agent, Lowell Taub, confirmed the surgery in an email exchange on Tuesday.
updated: Tue Feb 16 2010 11:21:00
Skier Lindsey Vonn is using an Austrian cheese to help heal the shin injury she suffered while at the Winter Games.
Didier Defago ended Switzerland's gold-medal drought in the Winter Olympics downhill skiing event as American star Bode Miller was edged into the bronze position at Whistler in Canada on Monday.
The Vermont-based mogul skiing champ has been on the slopes since she was 2
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- The long national nightmare ended at precisely 6:18 p.m. PDT on a soothing Sunday when a scoreboard at the bottom of Cypress Mountain flashed the final standings. Canada exhaled. The man who brought such relief is preternaturally upbeat fellow named Alexandre Bilodeau, a moguls skier who bumped his way down a 250-meter course and into the sporting history of his country.
It's fitting that Valentine's Day, a day when people lead with their hearts, fell during the Vancouver Games. Olympians bring the same dedication to training and competing as they do to supporting their communities and the causes that inspire them. Here are some examples.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- The third day of Olympic competitions falls on Valentine's Day, and no one can use a bigger hug than Canada following a tough Saturday in which the host country failed to end its home-gold medal drought. It's unlikely the Canadians will win a medal today (though they have a shot in men's moguls), but Sunday holds major promise for the U.S. in Nordic combined. Medals will also be awarded in the biathlon sprint, men's singles luge and women's speedskating. The highlights:
The last time it visited was four years ago, and right now it's embracing Vancouver. It's not the Olympic spirit, it's El Niño, the weather phenomenon that is helping to give Olympic organizers headaches by bringing warm air and rain from the South Pacific. The fog might be manna from heaven for American skier Lindsey Vonn, though, who wanted a few more days of cancelled training and races to let her bruised shin heal.
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- Alpine skiers are great waiters. Not that kind of waiter (although sometimes that kind, too, because if you're not at the highest level of the sport, like Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller, you sometimes need another job, too; but that's a different discussion). Waiters. As in: They are very experienced at waiting.
updated: Fri Feb 12 2010 15:40:00
CNN' Ayesha Durgahee catches up with Ghanian ski racer who qualified for 2010 Winter Olympics.
SI.com's writers will preview each event from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Here's Tim Layden's look ahead to Alpine skiing.
Athletes from 97 nations will march in Vancouver tonight at the Opening Ceremony of the XXI Winter Olympic Games. Turn on your TV. Watch and cheer.
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- At just before noon on Thursday, Thomas Vonn was sitting in a mountainside media center talking to two reporters, waiting out a snow delay in what would be the first official Olympic training session for his wife, Lindsey. A voice crackled from Vonn's portable radio, the type that ski racing coaches wear to communicate from various points on and around the mountains.
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- Look at it this way: Ski racers are generally injured so often that half their careers are spent in some combination of pain-management and rehabilitation. And even by those standards Lindsey Vonn is an outlier, with a long and colorful medical history that has alternately compromised her career and elevated her personal mythology. She has a scar somewhere to match every title she's won.
The starts are crucial in the regulated mayhem of ski cross, the newest Olympic sport. Sometimes the whole race is right there at the outset. A few seconds, the top of the world. You can feel the tension even during a practice run like the one early last December when Casey Puckett and Daron Rahlves were settling into the stalls of a steel gate at the top of a training course at the Telluride Ski Resort. The Olympic qualifying races were just three weeks away and the Vancouver games themselves were looming in less than two months. The snow that had been falling over southwest Colorado for most of the day was erasing the blue dye lines meant to help the racers gauge the contours of the course, which featured a tricky array of banked turns, rollers, jumps and the deep U-shaped trenches right below the gate known as wu-tangs.
SI.com's writers will preview each event from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Here's David Epstein's look ahead to Nordic combined.
SI.com's writers will preview each event from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Here's Sarah Kwak's look ahead to freestyle skiing, broken down into the event's three disciplines: aerials, moguls and the brand-new ski cross.
updated: Wed Feb 10 2010 06:29:00
Dr. Jennifer Shu explains how to be prepared to travel to the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Marjan Kalhor is already a champion, even though the Olympic flame has yet to blaze in Vancouver, Canada.
Insulated in designer skiwear against a temperature of -15° Celsius, three of China's burgeoning ski set bundle into a gondola headed to a wind-swept mountaintop in Heilongjiang province, Northeastern China.
Lindsey Vonn wrapped up the World Cup super-G crown by claiming victory at St.Moritz on Sunday for her third straight win in the speed discipline.
Switzerland's Didier Cuche could miss the Vancouver Winter Olympics after breaking his thumb in a World Cup giant slalom in Kranjska Gora on Friday.
The snowboarding community and the sports world at large have rallied around Kevin Pearce, the 22-year-old Olympic hopeful from Norwich, Vt. who suffered a brain injury during a practice run on the halfpipe last week in Utah and remains in critical condition. As of Tuesday morning, more than 14,000 people signed on to the Facebook group Well Wishes to Our Friend Kevin Pearce. The site has received notes of support from fans and fellow snowboarders, but also from many survivors of traumatic brain injuries who have described the productive lives they now lead.
Jessica Jerome is exhausted. The Park City, Utah, resident wakes up early to teach ski lessons to youngsters. She's working 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. shifts at events at the Sundance Film Festival to earn some cash
Daron Rahlves has one more thing he wants to add to his resume: an Olympic medal.
She's up. She's down. She's up again. The roller coaster ride that is Lindsey Vonn's season rose to its apex again over the weekend, when the defending overall World Cup champion swept three speed races in Haus im Enstal, Austria. Vonn won downhills on Friday and Saturday and captured a Super-G race on Sunday, easing fears that a damaged left arm she'd hurt in a fall last month would impair her Olympic ambitions. The victories boosted her lead in this season's World Cup standings to a robust 192 points ahead of Germany's Maria Riesch.
Lindsey Vonn completed a hat-trick of World Cup victories in the space of three days at Haus Im Ennstal in Austria as she claimed Sunday's super-G in fine style.
American skier Lindsey Vonn continued her dominance of the women's World Cup downhill season with a fourth successive victory in Austria on Saturday.
American Lindsey Vonn boosted her Winter Olympic preparations by reclaiming top spot in the overall World Cup standings with victory in Friday's women's downhill in Austria.
Four people died and another three were missing Monday after two avalanches in the Swiss Alps, Bern police said.
Local favorite Marlies Schild won the women's World Cup slalom in Lienz, Austria on Tuesday, as Lindsey Vonn rebounded from her heavy crash the day before to compete in the event.
A women's World Cup downhill cancelled at the French resort of Val d'Isere last week has been re-scheduled for January 8 at Haus im Ennstal, the International Ski Federation (FIS) have said.
What a difference a week makes for Lindsey Vonn. The U.S. alpine star had been horrible in Aspen, failing to qualify in the giant slalom and skiing off-course in the slalom. This past weekend, though, she nearly won all three races in Lake Louise, Canada. What's more, Vonn performed brilliantly under the same kind of conditions that often plague skiers in Whistler, site of the upcoming Olympics.
The machinery is fully cranked. Cameras are aimed, stories are in process (including one in Sports Illustrated), video packages have been assembled. In just over two months, the 2010 Winter Olympic Games will unfold in Vancouver and one U.S. skier will play the role of Michael Phelps, the athlete who can win multiple gold medals over the course of the Games, while delivering eyeballs to televisions and page views to Web sites. One athlete will be charged with monetizing the Olympic entertainment enterprise.
The World Cup races in North America weren't kind to the hosts last weekend, as both the U.S. and Canadian alpine teams lost skiers to serious injury for the rest of the year to serious injury.
Didier Cuche gave Switzerland opening honors in the men's World Cup skiing season with victory in the giant slalom on the Rettenbach glacier in Austria.
Legendary Austrian skier Hermann Maier has ended his illustrious career at the age of 36 despite having recovered from knee surgery.
From the very first words out of Bode Miller's mouth, it was apparent that this day would be different. "First of all, thank you guys for coming here,'' Miller said, opening his portion of a press conference in Los Angeles, at which he announced that he would be rejoining the U.S. Ski Team, and attempt to qualify for his fourth Olympic Games five months from now in Vancouver.
The death of actress Natasha Richardson, who sustained a fatal head injury while skiing, has reignited the perennial debate around the safety of the sport.
Skiers and snowboarders can cut the risk of brain injury dramatically by wearing helmets on the slopes, some experts say.
Iran is to send a female skier to the Winter Olympics for the first time at next year's Games in Vancouver, Canada, the head of the Islamic Republic's ski federation told state media Monday.
Aksel Lund Svindal has won the men's overall World Cup title for the second time in his career, after Austrian rival Benjamin Raich dramatically crashed out in the first leg of the closing slalom at the World Cup finals in Are, Sweden.
Austria's Benjamin Raich won the giant slalom at the World Cup finals in Are on Friday to close on the overall title ahead of the final race of the season.
Italy's Werner Heel won the super-G at the World Cup finals in Are as second-placed Aksel Lund Svindal clinched the title in the speed discipline and extended his lead in the overall standings.
Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway claimed the final downhill of the season at the World Cup finals in Are to edge ahead in a close battle for the men's overall title.
A chairlift broke on Monday morning, sending skiers into the snowy hillside at a ski resort in southern Spain, according to the Sierra Nevada resort.
American Lindsey Vonn clinched the World Cup downhill title despite finishing back in 12th in the latest round in Bansko, Bulgaria.
'"I had such a crush on him when I was a kid," says my friend Didi Linburn, pigtails peeking out from beneath her pink ski helmet rather than the wool pompom hat she wore as a kid. I peer into the tiny ski shop at the Alta Peruvian Lodge and catch a glimpse of a cute guy in glasses behind the counter. "No idea how old he is," she says, "but I've seen him here every winter since I was 15."
Austrian Manfred Pranger won the men's slalom gold medal at the world skiing championships at Val d'Isere on Sunday, after watching his main rivals for victory crash out of contention one by one.
Germany's Maria Riesch claimed her first gold at a world championships in a dramatic finale to women's competition at Val d'Isere on Saturday.
Switzerland's Carlo Janka kept his nerve to claim gold in the men's giant slalom at the alpine skiing world championships in Val d'Isere on Friday.
Germany's Kathrin Hoelzl has completed a shock victory in the women's giant slalom at the world skiing championships at Val D'Isere on Thursday.
Double world champion Lindsey Vonn cut her right thumb while opening a bottle of champagne in celebration of her downhill gold in Val d'Isere -- and ended up having surgery in Innbruck on Tuesday.
Lindsey Vonn of the United States saw her dream of sweeping the titles at the alpine skiing world championships disappear in a fraction of a second as she missed a slalom gate in the super-combi on Friday.
The title on Chris Doyle's business card reads "mad scientist," but he's not crazy, he's just crazy about snowboarding.
Cross-country skiing is less speedy -- and therefore less intimidating -- than its steep-sloped cousin, downhill skiing. It also burns more calories, as skiers glide along snowy trails and skate up inclines.
Switzerland's Didier Cuche claimed the first men's gold medal in the alpine skiing world championships in Val d'Isere with victory in Wednesday's super-G.
Lindsey Vonn extended her lead in the overall World Cup standings with victory in the super-G at Garmish-Partenkirchen on Sunday.
Didier Defago and Dominique Gisin gave Switzerland double cause for celebration with superb victories in World Cup downhills on Saturday.
Frenchman Julien Lizeroux banked his first World Cup victory when he triumphed in the men's World Cup slalom at Kitzbuehel, Austria, on Sunday.
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