Revived World Pro Ski Tour boasts two New England venues

Expect an unmistakable sense of déjà vu when racers slide into the starting gates at the revived World Pro Ski Tour at New Hampshire’s Waterville Valley in February and Maine’s Sunday River in late March. Oldtimers might hear the haunting exhortations of famed announcer Bob Beattie, or even catch a glimpse of ghostly apparitions resembling Steve and Phil Mahre, Billy Kidd, Tiger Shaw or Felix McGrath running the gates.

“The original Pro Tour was really the rock ’n’ roll age of skiing,” said Michael Ankeny, a Minnesota native and 2015 North American Cup champion. “The racers were cool, and the events looked like a big party.

“I hope that the new Pro Tour can piggyback off of that, and continue to bring the same energy to the events,” said Ankeny, 27. “I hope it stays true to its roots.”

Last March, the revived Pro Ski Challenge at Sunday River brought top North American racers together for the country’s first professional dual race in 18 years. Top-ranked American and fourtime national champion David Chodounsky, a Dartmouth grad, defeated 2017 U.S. and Canadian national slalom champion AJ Ginnis to take the $10,000 grand prize. This year, World Pro Ski Tour organizers are planning three events, including the two in New England.

Ankeny was among this new breed of slalom racers, along with brothers Alec and Ace Tarberry, 2012 national GS champion Robby Kelley, and 2016 national GS champion Kieffer Christianson, who raced side-by-side at Sunday River.

“I’m a huge fan of dual slalom because the excitement of racing head to head is exponentially more exciting than racing the clock,” said Alec Tarberry, a two-time All-American at Middlebury College. “Head-to-head racing is also more exciting for the fans. They can feel the adrenaline and intensity.”

Prior to last year’s event, it had been almost two decades since racers like the Tarberrys and Ankeny had a legitimate option to compete professionally in North America if they weren’t participating in the international “amateur” World Cup.

“Historically, the World Pro Ski Tour has been another avenue for ski racers to pursue if they are looking for other ways of making an income, looking to extend a career, or just change up the pace of the grueling World Cup circuit,” said Ankeny. “The guys who started the tour were having fun and tearing it up on the hill. That overall atmosphere associated with the Pro Tour is what attracted me the most.”

Ace Tarberry, a two-time NCAA All-American, first got a taste of the Pro Tour at school.

My college ski coach at Dartmouth, Peter Dodge, is a notorious former racer from the Pro Tour days,” he said. “My teammates and I used to fantasize about what it would be like for the tour to come back. We’d look at the poster of him in the ski office, racing over a pro bump, reading ‘Nordica, the benchmark in skiing.’ The dream was always for ski racing to regain popularity among the general public, and this is the venue.”

Dodge raced on the World Pro Tour and U.S. Pro Tour from 1980 to 1989, twice capturing Pro Skier of the Year honors. Those events gave him “the chance to compete independently, and to prove to myself that I could be the best in the world on a given day,” he said.

Beattie, a former racer and longtime coach of the U.S. Ski Team (1960-69), launched the original World Pro Ski Tour in 1970. The tour offered an alternative to the prestigious World Cup, which dominates the European circuit and is considered the pinnacle of the sport. Beattie’s stroke of genius was to present a different format — the dual slalom. Instead of racing strictly against the clock, Pro Tour slalom racers competed side by side on mirror courses.

“What’s nice about (the dual slalom) is that it’s usually a short course,” said Phil Mahre, 1984 gold medalist in Sarajevo and one of the best skiers produced by the United States with 27 World Cup victories. “The viewing public can see from start to finish.

“In amateur ranks, when the person is skiing down, you don’t know whether that person is having a good run or not,” he said. “But when you see them coming down head to head, you can see who is leading.”

Mahre and his twin brother Steve (nine World Cup victories) were lured to the Pro Tour for financial reasons, to fund their fledgling car-racing careers and recoup a lost investment in a failed clothing line.

“And we had a lot of fun doing it,” said Mahre, 60, laughing.

With an eclectic mix of former World Cup stars and not-ready-for-prime-time racers, “the camaraderie on the tours was unbelievable,” said Dodge, 63. “We were all incredibly competitive on the hill, (but) we knew we had to work together to travel, train and to make the tour happen.”

“Back in the day, the pro tours were a big deal,” he said. “Promotions, parties, events leading up and during the weekend, strong presence by manufacturers with equipment and technical support … almost every event was televised. There were pro-am fundraisers with celebrities, kids asking for autographs, et cetera. It was a great show.”

Plus, the tours inspired a generation of skiers who might not have been at the top echelon of the sport but cherished racing nonetheless.

“I had posters in my room as a child of all the great pro racers from the earlier eras,” said McGrath, the Pro Tour’s Rookie of the Year in 1992. “Coming from a small, non-ski town and not being exposed to the international world of ski racing until I was older, made the tour a big deal for a little kid who loved to ski.”

According to McGrath, the World Pro Tour was “the opposite of the World Cup,” and self-sufficiency was the key to success.

“There were no coaches or service people to support you,” said McGrath. “You had to survive on your own. That meant taking care of all the details the U.S. Ski Team normally managed, such as making your training schedule, travel plans, et cetera.

“I personally enjoyed that, because there was no one to blame if you skied poorly,” he said. “It was 100 percent the skier’s responsibility to perform.”

The original World Pro Ski Tour imploded in 1982, when the racers went on strike, and Beattie, by then a successful race commentator, shut it down. Several B-level tours filled the void. One was the Eastern Pro Racing Tour, headed by partners Ed Rogers, a Maine restaurateur, and Michael Collins under the umbrella North American Pro Ski. The tour went through several ownership changes — though Rogers was a constant — until The Family Channel sold its sports properties to Fox. When Fox dropped the tour, the series vanished, leaving racers in the lurch. And in mourning.

“The tour had a grassroots feeling,” said McGrath, 56. “We toured to some of the best ski resorts in America — Telluride, Aspen, Vail, Killington. Yet sometimes we raced at Boyne, Michigan, and Nashoba Valley (outside Boston). These smaller races always had many fans watching and taking part.”

The demise of the Pro Tour in 1998 created a vacuum that led to ESPN’s X Games and various snowboarding events, like the Dew Tour. But those events, said Rogers, put too much emphasis on “judged” competitions, such as halfpipe contests, while the public simply wants to see “a winner.” X Games races like boardercross and ski cross, and even Red Bull’s manic Crashed Ice events, reinforced that spectators want definitive results.

“In skiing, you’ve got winners and losers,” said Rogers. “Pro skiing fits that. You race each other until there’s only one guy left.”

The World Pro Ski Tour’s return was announced in early 2016, but logistical hurdles prevented organizers from putting together a series. Instead, the singular event was held at Sunday River as “a springboard” that Rogers said should convince other sponsors, other ski areas and other racers to sign on for future seasons.

Part of the draw of the World Pro Ski Tour is exposure, said Rogers. The Waterville Valley and Sunday River events will be televised by CBS Sports.

“We felt if we could get any one of the cable sports networks to do it, that would be a start,” said Rogers, 79. “So we hope we will grow and they will grow at the same time.”

The cable deal is a critical piece of the puzzle. So is patience, say former racers.

“It’s great the tour is being resurrected,” said McGrath. “However, it’ll take time to build the tour back to what it was. Unfortunately, it’s probably about sponsorship and prize money. The better the sponsors, the better the prize money. This will attract better ski racers, and make for a better tour.”

The Tarberry brothers count themselves among the lucky ones.

“This event has the potential to be legendary,” said Ace Tarberry, 29. “This event certainly has the same vibe, and with today’s social media I think it has a chance to reach people on a much higher level than before.”

Rogers has similar expectations.

“My goal is to create a professional sport, not just to have a bunch of events,” said Rogers. “We want to have our tour big enough to have 50 guys on the tour, where all of those guys can make a living.

“At least number 50 could make as much as he would if he were a full-time ski instructor,” he said. “And number one would make a couple million a year, and be considered a top athlete compared to other top athletes.”

The bottom line, said former racers, is that the revived World Pro Ski Tour will succeed if it captures the ultra-cool atmosphere that made the original tour a must-see event.

“My fondest memories?” said Dodge. “Defeating Austrian superstar Hansi Hinterseer in the finals of my third pro race in Aspen, and getting to kiss Playboy bunny Barbie Benton on the victory stand.”

Talk about the stuff that dreams are made of.