NASTAR NATIONALS A SUCCESS
The NASTAR Nationals just finished their third year at Steamboat Ski Resort, and the 2008 national champions are Diane Mazurek of Laurys Station, Pa, and Steven Coulter, of Wildwood, Mo.
But those hoping that the National Championships will now go to a resort back east are out of luck. Though a resort usually hosts the NASTAR finals for three years before the huge ski racing event moves to another ski area, for now it will stay in the Rocky Mountain area, as it has for the past decade.
NASTAR National coordinator Bill Madsen says, "The Nationals won't be going back east in the immediate future, but we are looking to do an Eastern Championships. It would be an addition to the NASTAR Nationals, it wouldn't replace it. But it would be an automatic qualifier for the nationals. We're just discussing it, nothing's been decided yet."
Meanwhile, there has been no formal announcement of where next season's event will be held. Madsen says it will be announced in early June. Yet there is some talk that this race, the largest ski race in the world, may remain at Steamboat. The resort has done better hosting this huge and complicated event each year.
This year was one of the best NASTAR Nationals in the 20 plus years of the event. Steamboat was on the verge of breaking its all-time snow record. A new high speed six passenger lift had been installed to take racers up to the start area, and a jumbo TV screen in the base plaza showed NASTAR action up on the hill, mixed in with racing from the World Cup finals.
There were 1,050 racers in the 2008 Nature Valley NASTAR Nationals, and there is nothing like it anywhere else on the planet. There are four-year-olds racing. There are crowds of racers in their 70's and 80's. Every participant had to qualify to compete by being one of the top three in their age and gender category by the February cut-off date.
Bob Morris of Vail, Co., is 76. He won his division, the men's 75-79 age group, beating 13 other racers to win the gold medal. "Skiing keeps me young. I even race in the summer, on the glacier (at Mt. Hood)," Morris said.
NASTAR has even had to add a 90 + division, which was won this year by John Woodward, of Mesa, Az. Naomi Wain, of Santa Barbara, Ca., won the women's 85-89 year old division.
Then there are the very young racers. In the 1-4 year old division, there were seven girls and eight boys. The numbers grew in the 5-6 year old category; 23 girls and 31 boys.
Then there are people like Pat Moore, of Okemo, Vt. He made NASTAR history this year by winning gold in the 60-64 age division of both skiing and snowboarding. As he collected his second gold medal, he said, "I'm deliriously happy! It was my goal to make the podium in both events, but I never thought I'd get first place."
Moore stays in shape by riding a unicycle, which he says is a form of exercise also used by newly crowned World Cup champion bode Miller.
NASTAR, the easy race course featured at 125 ski resorts throughout the country, has over 100,000 participants who pay for a chance to speed through gaint slalom style gates as fast as they can. It is of immense benefit to the sport of ski racing. The young racers are the future of the sport, but the parents and older racers are its base. They are the ones who buy the skis and the race suits, who learn the importance of properly maintained skis. It showed at Steamboat.
Kellen Johnson, a ski tech at Edgeworks Tuning at the base of Steamboat resort, said, "The average number of skis that we machine and wax each night is about 30. We did 150 the other night."
One feature of the annual event are the legendary pacesetters, who race the courses to set the "par time," or the day's time to beat. Each racer, whether at an ordinary daily NASTAR or the Championships, has a handicap set by how close they come to the day's pacesetter. But at the Nationals, the pacesetters are Olympians, even medalists. Racers at Steamboat not only were able to race against stars like Phil Mahre, AJ Kitt, Kristina Koznick, Debby Armstrong, Chad Fleischer and Kaylin Richardson, they were able to socialize with them. The pacesetters at the Championships are friendly and approachable. Mahre talked seriously with parents who wanted advice about their five-year-old's future in ski racing, and he chatted like an old friend with the man who wondered what kind of skis he should purchase to improve his race time.
He and the other pacesetters not only paceset, they took a few runs with skiers who happened to be in the lift line beside them.
And this is the secret of NASTAR. You can ski with Phil Mahre if you're a NASTAR racer. You can't just play with Tiger Woods if you're a golfer. You may love hoops, but it's highly unlikely you'll ever get to shoot with Michael Jordan.
The Nationals are three days for those who love the sport to be in the world they love. Everywhere you look, people are wearing race suits. Everywhere you go, someone wants to talk about ski racing. When you mention the rise line or your edge hold or an overlay, people know what you mean.
It's America's ski race, where people go to have fun while competing. The fun part is so often left out of other factions of ski racing. Maybe that's why NASTAR keeps growing.