Honda Ski Tour in Breckenridge Colorado – The inaugural Honda Ski Tour will make its second of four stops in the series this weekend at Breckenridge. The Ski Tour was founded by Kipp Nelson and Steve Brown, former University of Colorado alpine racers. Nelson, a trustee of the U.S. Ski Team as well as the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation, is hoping to put the fun back in to ski competition by combining two very separate aspects of the sport into one event.
The Ski Tour is North America’s new elite, four-stop mountain festival and skiing competition that features some of the world’s best halfpipe and skiercross athletes competing for a total of $500,000 over four stops, the largest purse in the sport. The circuit kicked off at Sun Valley, Idaho, earlier this month.
The list of confirmed athletes for both the skiercross and superpipe competitions include many of the same guys who lit up the Buttermilk venues during last weekend’s Winter X Games 11.
Making the skiercross event more interesting is the fact that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) recently approved the addition of skiercross for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA), the national governing body for Olympic skiing, is also calendaring the Ski Tour as a sanctioned USSA skiercross series.
The Breckenridge stop on the Ski Tour is scheduled to air on ABC Saturday, Feb. 10, at noon MST.
Competition Schedule
Friday, Feb. 2
Peak 9
11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. — Skiercross Time Trials
Peak 8
11 a.m. to 1 p.m. — Halfpipe Practice
1:15-2 p.m. — Halfpipe Heat 1
2:45-3:30 p.m. — Halfpipe
Heat 2
5:45–7 p.m. — Night Pipe: Halfpipe Finals
7:15 p.m. — Awards Ceremony
Saturday, Feb. 3
Peak 9
12:15-12:30 p.m. — Skiercross fore-runners
12:30-12:45 p.m. — Paul Mitchell Dark Horse Heats
1-2:15 p.m. — Skiercross Heats & Finals
2:15 p.m. — Awards
