Still, Beattie isn’t about to stir up any kind of Vail-Aspen rivalry. Nobody does what Vail does, I concede that, but Aspen has done a hell of a job too.”
“Aspen not having a World Cup this year, I understand it, but it could have been done. The fact that we’re having two here on a continent likes ours? That’s ridiculous,” Beattie said. “I’d like to see World Cup races on the East and the West Coast. This season Aspen was skipped so the women could instead try out the new Raptor course for the 2015 World Championships at Vail and Beaver Creek. Since the early ’90s, the FIS (International Ski Federation) World Cup tour, which Beattie helped found in 1966, has steadily reduced the number of races in North America, with venues like Park City, Utah, and Whistler, British Columbia, dropping off and only Lake Louise, Canada, Beaver Creek and Aspen still on the circuit. Don’t just sit back and do what the Austrians have done take the leadership over here. “I think that behooves the Ski Team to do that. “I see a lot of future in the sport, but you need to change the rules around and you need to change the format a little bit here and there and tinker with it – always have something fresh and new,” Beattie said by phone from his Woody Creek home near Aspen. Having done so much to build the sport over the past five decades – especially in America - Beattie says the future is bright given the high level of current and upcoming talent, but he’d still like to see more innovation led by North Americans.
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Ski Team to relevance with the first Olympic medals earned by American men (slalom silver and bronze for Billy Kidd and Jimmie Heuga) at the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria.Īnd that’s the approach he took in the ’70s and ’80s when he founded the World Pro Ski Tour that allowed racers to break away from amateur rules and the constraints of skiing for national teams and gave them the chance to earn prize money in a head-to-head format with jumps. That’s the approach he took in the early ’60s when he coached the first U.S. That’s the approach “The Coach” took in the late ’50s when the former Middlebury football player and skier took over as ski coach at the University of Colorado and won two NCAA titles with mostly homegrown talent as opposed to the European imports at rival University of Denver. Brash Beattie brought football mentality to American ski racingĭecemAt age 80, Aspen’s Bob Beattie still likes to stir the pot, especially if it bubbles over on ski racing’s European establishment.
Ski and Snowboard also put out a press release on Monday (see below). The stories also ran in the Vail Daily. U.S. In honor of Beattie, here’s are a couple of re-posts of 20 stories I did for the Colorado Ski & Snowboard Museum here in Vail. The legendary ski industry figure died Sunday in Fruita at the age of 85 (Colorado Ski H& Snowboard Museum and Hall of Fame photo).Īccording to the Aspen Times, legendary ski-industry broadcast and ski-racing innovator Bob Beattie of Aspen died Sunday at his son’s home in Fruita. Bob Beattie at the Colorado Ski Museum Hall of Fame induction gala in October of 2013.
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