The latest Euro Craze requires the lungs of lance and the legs of Bode—and it’s starting to catch on in the us.
Although it sounds like what French cheerleaders would do before a big rugby match, a randonnée rally is a race that melds ski mountaineering with backcountry skiing. It requires all the fitness necessary for climbing uphill and all the poise for racing downhill. These über-athletes virtually sprint up slopes (top competitors can climb 2,050 vertical feet in 18 minutes, almost as fast as a high-speed quad), tear off climbing skins without removing their snow-blade-length skis, and plummet, Evel-Knievel-style, downhill to the next climb.
In North America, rallies are held on or around ski areas, include mixed terrain like couloirs and mogul fields and advocate lightweight, alpine touring equipment. So far, the only World Cup race in the US is the Black Diamond (BD) PowderKeg in Utah, which traverses 8.4 miles from Alta to Brighton, and attracts the cream of the crop, mostly from Europe.
Although randonnée rallies have had widespread appeal across the Atlantic for years, the sport has not yet taken off here. But with the BD PowderKeg, Life-Link/Dynafit series, the newly formed United States Ski Mountaineering Association and smaller, independent events, the sport is gaining popularity, and races now dot the map from Whistler/ Blackcomb, British Columbia, to Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.
“A big reason why BD made the PowderKeg a World Cup is to someday make this an Olympic sport,” says Andrew McLean, the race’s course-setter and technical director. “There’s a growing effort and it will be a long road, but we’ll get there.”
That’s not to say the sport is only for elite athletes. At the PowderKeg, a shorter, recreational course provided friendlier, but nonetheless fierce competition for the averagely fit-but-inexperienced.
“It was a great taste of rando-racing, in a newbie environment, that was out of the way of the superhuman Euro competitors,” says first-time racer Katie Cavicchio of the rec division.
Who knows? In a few years we may need those cheerleaders.
The Black Diamond PowderKeg happens again in March 2006; contact 801-278-0233 or www.bdel.com/powderkeg/. For other events, visit www.life-link.com/race.htm or www.ussma.org.
