STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Fire. Waterford Crystal. Olympic stars with heavy metal.

The nation’s top junior ski racers and dozens of Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation kids who want to be like them were treated to memorable evening during Wednesday’s Opening Ceremony for the 2018 U.S. Junior Alpine Championships.

Hailey’s Olympic Snowboarder Chase Josey and his compatriot Bronze Medal Winner Arielle Gold arrived by fire truck, along with Sun Valley’s Hilary Knight and a handful of her gold medal-winning teammates from the U.S. Women’s Hockey Team.

And they draped medals attached to stuffed mountain goats—honoring the mountain goats that inhabit the mountains around Sun Valley—around the necks of those who medaled in the Super G races earlier that day.

“I ran off the mountain to watch the women’s hockey game,” Ketchum’s Steve Porino, who served as ski analyst for NBC during the 2018 Winter Olympics, told the athletes. “And that was worth the run—on ski boots.”

More than 150 racers representing the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Croatia, Great Britain, Spain, Australia and Ireland are competing in the event, which started with a Super G on Wednesday and concludes today—Friday, March 30—with Slalom contests.

“We are a ski town and this event defines us. You being here connects us to our heritage. And it connects us to the future because you are the future of skiing,” Ketchum Mayor Neil Bradshaw told the athletes.

Sun Valley Mayor Peter Hendricks pointed to his wife Lisa-Marie Allen as he described how she went from being junior national figure skating champion to the Olympics five years later.

“It’s important for you to learn anything can happen,” he said.

He then presented Sun Valley hockey forward Hilary Knight, whose cousin Olympic racer Chip Knight is in Sun Valley this week as a referee, with a gift from the City of Sun Valley in recognition of her gold medal.

The City of Sun Valley had already presented her with a key to the city when she won the silver medal, he noted. So, what do you get an Olympic hero who already has everything? A Waterford Crystal hockey puck—that hopefully Knight won’t practice shooting goals with!

Racers are testing their mettle on the same steep technical courses on Warm Springs, Greyhawk and Hemingway that challenged the nation’s best alpine ski racers this past week in the 2018 U.S. Alpine Championships.

AJ Hurt—that’s Amelia Josephine, in case you’re wondering—picked up where she left off on Wednesday, winning a gold medal in Women’s Super G to add to the two gold and silver medals she collected during the Nationals earlier in the week.

“Having skied here the past few days definitely helped, as there are a lot of great racers here,” said the 17-year-old from Squaw Valley, Calif.

River Radamus, who collected a bronze medal in Men’s Super G a week earlier, won the Men’s Super G on this Wednesday by more than a second and a half.

“I just wanted to make it to the finish line as I fell a couple times during the Nationals,” said Sun Valley’s Spencer Wright. “This course is a little different but it’s still tough!”

Hurt’s string of impressive runs came to an end on Thursday as she did not finish the first run of the Women’s Giant Slalom, which she had won during the Nationals. The first three women, including Hurt, Nellie-Rose Talbot and Madison Ostergren, did not complete their runs as 27 of the 68 racers who started missed gates or sailed off course.

Canada’s Roni Remme and Alix Wilkinson, who respectively won silver and bronze medals on Wednesday, led after the first run.

When it was over Wilkinson, who nabbed a bronze in Wednesday's Super G, grabbed the Giant Slalom gold. Canada's Stefanie Fleckenstein, who was edged out by Wilkinson for the bronze in the Super G, won the silver medal. And Remme won bronze.

Sun Valley's Erin Smith placed 11th.

George Steffey, who medaled during the Nationals, led the men’s run after the first, along with Cooper Cornelius and Kyle Negomir, as 39 of 84 men failed to finish the course.Steffey went on to win it by a full second, while River Radamus turned on the acid burners in the second run to nab a silver. Andrew Miller placed third.

“This has been an amazing week of racing,” said SVSEF Athletic Director Phil McNichol, whose racers produced 42 World Cup victories, 98 World Cup podiums, four World Championship titles and an Olympic gold medal during his helm atop the U.S. Men’s Alpine Team.  “The surface and hill is World Cup caliber—I can attest to that.”

Tim McConnell, a coach with the Steamboat Springs ski team, praised ski cultures in towns like Sun Valley and his town of Steamboat Springs for cultivating young athletes like River Radamus, whom he described as a Formula One-type racer. They attract athletes who want to come back and coach kids after they retire from ski racing, he said.

“SunValley is like the Tahiti of the ski resorts—above and beyond the average ski resort,” he said. “It has a heritage in ski racing, as well as being the oldest ski resort in North America. It’s a ski resort that was built by skiers and run by skiers at a level that exceeds others.”

He paused to watch racers rip down Upper Greyhawk.

“This course is very technically difficult, very unforgiving—last week’s skiers were more developed and they had trouble on it,” he added. “But it’s good for kids that are headed to that level to get the chance to test themselves on it. If they can make turns and maintain speed,  that will separate them from the others.”

RACE RESULTS

MEN’S SUPER G

1-River Radamus 1:07.39

2-Louis Muhlein-Schulte of Austria 1:08.92

3-Jacob Dilling 1:08.96.

WOMEN’S SUPER G

1-AJ Hurt 1:11.69.

2-Roni Remme of Canada 1:12.17

3-Alix Wilkinson 1:12.54

MEN'S GIANT SLALOM

1-George Steffey 2:11.88

2-River Radamus 2:12.93

3-Andrew Miller 2:13.30

WOMEN'S GIANT SLALOM

1-Alix Wilkinson 2:18.84

2-Stefanie Fleckenstein 2:19.33

3-Roni Remme 2:19.40