STORY BY JOHN W. LUNDIN

PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

In October 2024, a delegation from the F.I.S. and U.S. Ski & Snowboard, the country’s national governing body for skiing and snowboarding, gave final approval for Sun Valley Resort to host the Audi F.I.S. Ski World Cup Finals March 22-27, 2025.

The Resort’s improved race courses were found to meet F.I.S requirements for 25 men and 25 women from 30 countries to compete at Sun Valley in all four Alpine skiing disciplines--slalom, giant slalom, downhill and super-G.

International attention will be on Sun Valley as European greats and their teams will come for the tournament, and two million people are expected to watch the event in the United States alone.

Final approval was based on the completion of the new Challenger race course on Warm Springs, which promises to be one of the most demanding downhill courses in North America. The name Challenger is a tribute to Union Pacific Railroad and its Board Chairman Averell Harriman, who built Sun Valley in 1936 as America’s first destination ski resort. It also pays homage to the railroad’s Challenger railcars.

In the mid-1930s, Union Pacific introduced the “age of streamliners”--luxurious and fast new trains that were air-conditioned, made of aluminum and diesel-powered featuring Challenger cars that revolutionized rail passenger service. They “weren’t merely transportation—they were sophisticated hotels and restaurants on wheels,” with observation cars resembling the “parlor of a Gay Nineties madam,” said railroad historian Maury Klein.

The name Challenger has also been bestowed on the resort’s new state-of-the-art Challenger chairlift, which serves Warm Springs and the new race course.

“Sun Valley has a long and storied history in ski racing, for many years hosting the revered Harriman Cup, our first FIS World Cup in 1975, and most recently the U.S. Alpine Championships back-to-back,” said Pete Sonntag, Sun Valley’s general manager. “We’re proud of our mountain and believe it will provide a great test of the world’s greatest skiers, but we’re even more proud of our community and the way this small western town can rally around an event of this caliber. We’re thrilled for athletes, families and travelers worldwide to come experience the best of Sun Valley.”

The process began with a permit application Sun Valley Resort filled with the Forest Service in the winter of 2023-2024, said James Grant, Sun Valley’s director of Mountain Operations. Sun Valley officials worked on a course design with the F.I.S. and U.S.S.A. Work began on the ground on July 1, 2024, and has been non-stop since.

On-mountain improvements include widening and grading runs to provide the width required by F.I.S. rules, installing additional snowmaking on select sections of trails, providing top-to-bottom communication networks for start locations and timing and installing an A-Net for additional racer protection

Only a small portion of tree work on Baldy the summer of 2024 was associated with the race course. Most of the tree work was part of the Bald Mountain Stewardship Program, a multi-year approach to establish healthy and sustainable forests in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and The National Forest Foundation. The program is designed to improve overall forest health, reduce fire risk, and improve recreation access.

However, in select locations along the race course, additional trees were removed where the trail needed to be wider to meet F.I.S. regulations. Trees removed from the course were second-growth trees that are part of normal summer trail maintenance.

Sun Valley’s World Cup Finals will feature competition in all four racing disciplines on courses that meet F.I.S. guidelines for course design for each discipline for maximum and minimum length, vertical drop, maximum/minimum number of gates, safety fencing, timing, infrastructure, etc.

Downhill--819 meter vertical (2687 feet) and 1.5 miles long

Super G–613 meter vertical (2011 feet) and 1.1 miles long

Giant Slalom--412 meters vertical (1352 feet) and 0.7 miles long

Slalom—210 meters vertical (689 feet) and 700 yards long

Grant said that after the race courses were constructed, they were “homologated,” or inspected by outside engineers to ensure they meet the F.I.S. guidelines, before they were officially certified for competition.

The 2025 downhill course is an improvement of the Harriman Cup downhill course designed in 1938 by the famous ski racer from Dartmouth--Dick Durrance. That course was used for Harriman Cup tournaments from 1939 until the late 1940s.

The new course will recapture the excitement of the classic Harriman Cup downhill races from the early days of the Resort. In their day, Harriman Cup Tournaments were the country’s most prestigious and competitive events, attracting the best skiers in the world.

The American Ski Annual in 1943 said, “Just as it is the dream of every tennis player to compete once at Wimbledon, it is every skier’s hope to participate in the famous Harriman Cup Races at Sun Valley.”

The Sun Valley Ski Club’s 1956 Annual Report agreed: “Every American sport has its moment of supreme glory--that particular event in which the entire panorama seems to be compressed into one sharply defined focal point. Baseball has its World Series, golf its National Open and horse racing its Kentucky Derby. For skiing, it is the Harriman Cup...”

The top parts of Durrance’s course and the World Cup downhill course are similar. Both start near the top of Warm Springs, go along a ridge, now called International and dive into Warm Springs Bowl on a steep slope. This slope, called the “steilhang” in 1939, is said to be “as steep as a ski jumping hill and two hundred yards long.

Following the steilhang, the course then heads toward the bottom of Warm Springs.

The 1939 course went all the way down to Warm Springs Creek. The 2025 course leaves Warm Springs, goes into Upper Greyhawk, then onto a newly constructed traverse called the Sluice from Upper Greyhawk to Hemingway. Snowmaking equipment has been installed along it.

The course goes down Hemingway, then cuts back to Lower Greyhawk on a connection called the Redd. Nets have been installed along Hemingway, and along the connection from Lower Hemingway to Greyhawk to protect racers.

The super-G starts at the bottom of the steilhang, and follows the rest of the downhill course. The giant slalom start is near the beginning of the new traverse and follows the downhill course into Greyhawk and Hemingway. The slalom start is on Lower Greyhawk.

The finish lines for all the courses are at the bottom of Greyhawk.

VIP Packages for the Stifel Sun Valley Finals include a deluxe private viewing area at the finish line, gourmet catered food and beverages, shuttle services and more.

They cost $4,750 for an All-Access pass for the races march 22-23 and 25-27. The Speed package for races March 22-23 cost $2,000, and the Tech pass good for March 25-27 costs $2,850.

COMING UP: John W. Lundin will discuss the excitement surrounding the earlier Harriman Cup races on Baldy in Eye on Sun Valley next week.

More about the history of Sun Valley and Wood River Valley can be found in John W. Lundin’s books, Skiing Sun Valley: A History From Union Pacific To The Holdings, and Sun Valley, Ketchum and The Wood River Valley, as well as his many history essays at the Center for Regional History at The Community Library.  His website is https://www.johnwlundin.com/.