Warm Temperatures, Lack of Snow Welcome Olympic Skiers
Trucks and helicopters are still dumping snow onto Cypress Mountain near Vancouver to get the Olympic venues ready for the Games, which open Friday.
The first event scheduled is women's moguls qualifying on Saturday, with the finals to be raced later that day.
Only athletes and their coaches were allowed at training yesterday, when they were to get their first look at the conditions.
"For safety reasons and our desire not to have any of the course-preparation work impacted, we decided just to let on the people that are absolutely necessary for the training," said Dave Cobb, executive vice president of the Vancouver organizing committee.
The weather in and around Vancouver has created problems for Olympic organizers. Although the venues at Whistler - where the alpine and nordic events will be held - are fine, the Cypress Mountain venues closer to the city have been affected by unseasonably warm weather.
"There's still a lot of snow being trucked and flown in to ensure we have enough contingency snow if the warm weather continues," Cobb said. "There's a lot of activity going on."
Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, said he had "absolutely no concerns whatsoever" about the state of Cypress Mountain.
"There is no concern, and there is no Plan B," he said.
"I've skied on rocks, I've skied on ice, I've skied in the rain. This is nothing," World Cup champion Hannah Kearney said, ahead of her first pre-Olympic practice run. "It's unfortunate for the beauty of the surrounding mountains . . . but I don't think it is going to be a problem for us skiing."
World champion Patrick Deneen was confident that events on Cypress Mountain would go ahead. The men's moguls take place Sunday.
"If there's snow, we will ski for sure," he said. "I've seen pictures, and it looks like there's a lot of snow on that course right now. They've been trucking it in and really making it happen."
Christian Hrab, director of high performance for Canada's snowboarding teams, said the landscape of white ribbons of snow draped over bare hillsides reminded him of Bardonecchia, the similarly bare alpine resort where the snowboarding events were staged at the 2006 Turin Olympics.
Hrab said the snowboard-cross track had held up well during testing over the last couple of days, and the half-pipe also looked good.
The Americans said skiing on courses built on otherwise snow-free slopes was a fact of life on the moguls circuit.
"In Italy, we were on a dirt hill that was dirt on both sides of us and a run in the middle," Michelle Roark said.
To prepare the venues, organizers already have canceled two days of half-pipe training and pushed back parallel-giant-slalom training by two days.
Shannon Bahrke said a bit of warm weather would not put off athletes who had trained for years for a shot at the Olympics.
"We've worked our whole lives for this," she said.
