There’s No Better Place In the U.S. To Host A Skimo World Cup Event Than Salt Lake City

Sarah Cookler, head of sport for the U.S. Ski Mountaineering Association, said Utah’s capital city if one of the hubs of skimo in the country.

As Sarah Cookler answered her cell phone recently, she was busy accepting a delivery of start and finish markers for the ski mountaineering course at Solitude Mountain Resort.

For months, such details have occupied Cookler, head of sport for the U.S. Ski Mountaineering Association, who is serving as race director for the ISMF World Cup event taking place Dec. 5-7 at Solitude, which is just outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. It’s the first skimo world cup held in the U.S. in 20 years and will serve as the final qualifier for the sport’s debut at Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026.

The world cup is an important event for USA Skimo, whose mixed relay team is in 13th place in the world rankings, just a single point behind Canada. With the top nation from each continent earning a quota spot for the Games, the Americans will book a trip to Italy if they finish ahead of Canada at Solitude.

As Cookler pointed out, in welcoming teams from 22 different nations, there are many logistical considerations, including travel, lodging and meals.

“There’s a lot that goes into it,” said Cookler of the world cup event. “What comes to mind first is all of the race venue, the actual racecourse preparation. And that’s a big part of it. But there’s a lot of other behind-the-scenes (work).”

Preparation began early last spring, when the ISMF needed to find a new venue for next month’s event.

“This was definitely a shorter planning period than many of the world cups,” Cookler said. “With some relatively quick assessments of can we get enough funding together for this, we were able to come back and say, ‘Yeah, we’d like to entertain this idea and move forward.’”

She noted that planning with Solitude didn’t even begin until the middle of the summer. The site was a natural choice for Cookler, who lives nearby and already was quite familiar with the resort.

Daily direct flights from Paris and Amsterdam make Salt Lake City accessible to international travelers, and the airport is just 45 minutes away from the race venue.

“Solitude was really willing to jump in and do everything they can,” Cookler said. “I think we’ve got a really solid relationship with them.”

The biggest concern at Solitude leading into the world cup is a lack of natural snow this year in the Wasatch Mountains.

There’s no snow currently on the ground, and there’s a chance there won’t be any by the world cup event. Cookler has lived in the area for the past 20 years, and she said she’s typically skiing on a lot of natural snow by Thanksgiving.

“This is just a really remarkable year, a very unprecedented year,” she said. “Usually, we have a pretty consistent early-season snowpack in the Wasatch, and, of course, this is not the year that we wanted to see this happen.”

Fortunately, as the event approaches, overnight temperatures have dropped sufficiently to support the production of snowmaking.

“Obviously, definitely, (we) would like more snow,” Cookler said. “The resort’s doing everything they can to provide a good race venue. It is doable with minimal amounts of snow.”

According to Cookler, elevation could be another factor. She added that most European world cup races start between 4,000 and 6,000 feet, while the Solitude event will start at 8,000 feet.

Foreign teams are working to acclimate themselves to the increased elevation.

“Most of the European teams are coming early to Salt Lake,” Cookler said. “Some of them are already here. Many of the teams have been at altitude camp in Europe, up on the glaciers, for the past couple of weeks training.”

Cookler hopes to greet the skiers to a world cup environment similar to what they would find in Europe.

“The atmosphere is great,” Cookler said. “It’s a very diverse cultural experience with all these different nations there.

“Everybody’s staying at Solitude, which is really a unique kind of environment where the racecourse and all the accommodations are right in the same place. So, it really creates this atmosphere of a world-class event.”

Skimo is still a niche sport in the U.S., but Cookler pointed out that Salt Lake City is one of the hubs of the sport in the country, so it’s the perfect place to host this historic event.

“We’ve got a very large and supportive skimo community in the Salt Lake area,” she said. “But we’re also hoping, obviously, to attract the skimo community of the West and, hopefully, nationally.”

If all goes well, this could be the first of many world cup events in the U.S.

“The financial obligation is probably the limiting factor,” said Cookler, “but hopefully this first one goes off well and attracts sponsors and supporters, and this can be something that is a regular stop on the skimo world cup.”

Bob Reinert spent 17 years writing sports for The Boston Globe. He also served as a sports information director at Saint Anselm College and Phillips Exeter Academy. He is a contributor to TeamUSA.com on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.