The World Championships Come to Vail
Near Vail, Colorado
For a resort that was invented in an empty valley, Vail has earned a place among the true capitals of ski racing. Three times the town and its neighbor Beaver Creek have hosted the Alpine World Ski Championships, the sport's top event outside the Winter Olympics. The first was in February of nineteen eighty nine, when the championships returned to the United States for the first time in decades, and every race was held right here at Vail.
The second came in nineteen ninety nine, split between Vail and Beaver Creek. The third arrived in February of two thousand fifteen. This is rarer than it sounds.
Only a few places on the planet have hosted these championships three times or more, and the Swiss resort of Saint Moritz has done it five times. For a couple of weeks each of those years, the best downhill racers in the world came screaming down these slopes at highway speeds while crowds packed the finish area. It is a remarkable record for a mountain that had no name at all within the memory of people still living in town.
