Cypress World Cup - No Spectators?

[yyzcanuck]

From the following LINK:

Busload of school kids will be cheering on local hero Loo

Richmond native makes special effort to connect with students

Terry Bell, The Province

Published: Thursday, January 29, 2009

Tickets will be hard to get, but Richmond's Alexa Loo will still have 100 of her biggest -- make that littlest -- fans cheering her on at the snowboarding World Cup on Cypress Mountain next month.

The kids, from Richmond's Ecole Elementaire Tomekichi Homma Elementary School, are coming to the Feb. 15 event with signs cheering on Loo and the rest of the Canadian team. The two best signs will win a pair of 2010 Olympic tickets that Loo bought through the lottery for her event, the parallel giant slalom.

"They're really excited," said Kirsten Wallace, the school's vice-principal, on Wednesday.

It's not for the faint of heart. You have to want to stand around for two hours and you have to be psyched up. It's just not for every kid.

"But if there are 500 signs, we will bring them all up and put them around. It's going to be great."

In November, Tomekichi Homma Elementary "adopted" Loo through the Canadian Olympic Committee's Adopt an Olympian program. Loo visits the school and e-mails them with regular updates from the World Cup circuit.

But her event almost didn't happen. Because ticketing and mountain access is so restricted, it took some talks with VANOC to get the green light.

There's no spectator parking on Cypress but special arrangements have been made to bus the kids to the hill.

Loo originally wanted to attract several sponsors to cover the $700 cost of a school bus and tickets. She'd envisioned several hundred kids on the hill getting a taste of World Cup action and learning about the sport, but that fell through.

"I was so excited about the prospect of bringing kids up to Cypress and holding a contest for all kids coming up to the mountain to be able to win Olympic tickets," Loo said via e-mail from Germany, where she's competing.

"I thought it was a great way of promoting my sport and promoting the Olympics at home.

"You have no idea how disappointed I was when I was informed that spectators were not welcome."

© The Vancouver Province 2009

[yyzcanuck]

According to this LINK:

Spectators are welcome but in limited numbers. Regular lift ticket will also allow you to view the race.

Beginning February 1st, tickets will be available for purchase at the West Vancouver Aquatic Centre (2121 Marine Drive, West Vancouver B.C.) www.westvancouver.ca

Tickets are available in limited supply. These tickets are not available for purchase at Cypress Mountain. Valid Cypress Mountain lift ticket and/or season pass will allow entry. www.cypressmountain.com

• $10/ticket includes one day of competition and a return bus transfer from the World Cup Event Park & Ride located at the Clyde Avenue Parkade (northeast side of Park Royal Shopping Centre). See map and spectator shuttle schedule below.

• Please be advised that this in NOT a Cypress Mountain lift ticket.

• Skis and snowboards not allowed on shuttle.

• Please be advised that due to limited parking at Cypress, tickets must be validated on the bus to guarantee entry into venue.

• Please see event schedule for competition information.

Tickets are available for the following dates:

• Friday, February 13th 2009

• Saturday, February 14th 2009

• Sunday, February 15th 2009

Spectator Shuttle Schedule

Departs from the World Cup Event Park & Ride and loops to Cypress Mountain frequently during the following hours:

• Friday, February 13th (11:30 am – 3:45 pm)

• Saturday, February 14th (7:00 am – 6:15 pm)

• Sunday, February 15th (7:00 am – 5:15 pm)

[Gtanner]

I'm actually volunteering for the Cypress WC as a slipper for PGS and HP.

The busing system seems to be pretty well organized, just not too well publicized. It sounds like they don't want the cars filling up the small parking-lot.

Hopefully they do a bit better on letting the public know that there are options. The downfall is about a 30-45 min bus ride from the pick-up location to the hill...so plan accordingly.

-Gord

[Guest Boardbum]

I was there last year for the Nationals in Snowboard-cross and HP. One of the first things that came to mind, besides the fact that I never saw the hill in the four days that I was there because of fog. How are they planning on getting spectators to Cypress during the Olympics? And if it is busing do you pay for that on top of your event ticket. This has disaster written all over it. With the economy being the way it is and who knows where its going. This Olympics is going to cost us Canadians for along time to come.

[BlueB]

Yup, Gord is right - it has to do mostly with limited parking space. It makes perfect sense that those not carrying the equipment (spectators) come by bus. Upper (main) parking will be full just with media and teams' vechicles, overflow parkings should be for people who come to the hill with the skis/boards and mountain staf. It's just a short bus ride and good way to avoid driving on nasty Cypress road.

[Gtanner]

Hey Boris, are you volunteering to help with the competition?

Also it looks like they want the public skiiers and boarders to use the busses

aswell...we'll see how that works out.

-Gord

[BlueB]

Gord,

Make sure you hook up with us while on the hill. Email me - I'll send you my cell no.

Not sure about volunteering thing - the only day I'm certain I can do it is Sunday and that's my scheduled teaching day... I'll probably talk to Canuck team, if they needed any help.

I don't think that regular skiing visitors would have to come by buss. They didn't have to last year during WC BX and ski freestyle. Olympics is another story - mountain will be totally closed for free skiing during February.

[philfell]

When the Olympics were in Park City you need a special residents pass in order to drive in the town at all. All non-residents had to park outside of town and take buses into town.

It actually worked pretty well and you were able to get to where you wanted to go much faster than if they didn't enforce this.

[Rob Stevens]

... for the Olympics.

Heading up to Happo One for the Women's SG ski race, in the rental car with Kerrin Lee Gardner and Scott Auch, her on-air partner. The producer of the event, Jeff, was behind the wheel. I was tagging along for the ride, as I heard that Happo had got hit with 50cm over a few days and it was looking powish.

About 20 k's from the event site, we ran into a wall of cops.

Apparently, we didn't have the right day pass, so they weren't super keen to let us by. Our wheelman, however, wasn't hearing it and, acting the ignorant tourist, just matted it and off we went. I'm looking out the back window, watching about thirty cops trying to catch us on foot.

They're nothing, if not persistent, those Japanese coppers.

Anyway, what we didn't realise was why they were out in such force.

Apparently, just before our turn-off to Happo One was the site of this ski jump events. At the time, the top three guys in the World at 90 metres were Japanese athletes. As you can imagine, there were more than a couple of folks who wanted to watch this event.

One party that had an interest were the Crown Prince and Princess Akihito.

About ten minutes after running the roadblock, Copperhead Road style, we see flashing cop cherries behind us. To the ****-screaming of our producer, we pull over, but instead of the trailing car pulling in behind us, it goes whizzing past with a motorcade in tow. We see this as an opportunity and not knowing who we're training, we jump in behind.

Not two minutes later, we are in a tunnel of screaming humanity. The roadsides were literally fifty deep for five k's with people practically falling into the road to get a look at the Diety's rolling by. We thought their greeting was pleasant enough and rolled down our windows to say hi.

Well, after a bit, they turn off and we keep going. Over that short stretch, we made some good time and had pretty much made up for what we lost at the checkpoint.

The rest of the day was pretty funny, too. I got to Happo and they tell me there's no snowboarding. **** that, I said. I'm a huge white person and I'm getting on your lift. Three runs of metre deep rippers later, they had enough manpower on site to throw me out. No big deal.

Some time later, I've wandered over to the finish corral of the SG race to see who I could see. I love ladies in race suits, so I wasn't worried about there being a lack of visual stimulation. The spectating didn't last long, though, as one of the production team came running up to me shouting "Ross Rebagliati has just tested positive for smoking pot!!"

And that kids, is a story for another time.