BY KAREN BOSSICK

Wax technician Curtis Bacca and former downhill Olympic racer Jonna Mendes have more than 200 World Cup races between the two of them.

Learn behind-the-scenes tales of what it takes to get athletes ready for racing from waxing to training when the two present a program titled “Behind the Start Gate” at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 4, at The Community Library.

Bacca, who owns The Waxroom in Ketchum, is a six-time Olympic wax technician for the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team who has spent 30 years on the World Cup circuit. He’s one of only three American wax techs who can claim a U.S. Men’s World Cup Downhill victory and the only American to achieve wins in the Olympics, X-Games and World Cup.

He’s tuned for such Olympic champions as Seth Wescott and Lindsey Jacobellis, contributing to 66 World Cup podiums, 25 X-Games medals and six FIS Snowboard World Championships medals. And his expertise has been highlighted on NBC Sports, ESPN and in such publications as The New York Times and POWDER Magazine.

Mendes, who has been director off the Sun Valley Ski Academy since 2011, is a World Championships medalist who raced on the World Cup for nine seasons and competed in the 1998 Winter Olympics at Nagano and in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

A four-time U.S. National Champion in GS and downhill, she won a Bronze medal in the World Championship in 2003 for Super-G.

After retiring from the U.S. Ski Team in 2006, she coached the development team on the U.S. Ski Team for four years before moving to Sun Valley. She was inducted into the Sun Valley Winter Sports Hall of Fame, which is part of the Wood River Museum of History + Culture in 2023.

To see the program in person register at https://thecommunitylibrary.libcal.com/event/13951034. The program also will be livestreamed and available to watch later at https://vimeo.com/event/4922293.

The program was one of three organized by the Wood River Museum of History + Culture in conjunction with the 2025 Audi FIS World Cup Finals being held on Sun Valley’s Bald Mountain March 20-27.