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Show ItSi " y. , " The M Thursday, IVfarch 19, 1981 PageBl Utes take NCAA ski championship . By Richard Barnum-Reece If you really want to get a grip on the mean-spirited ambiance that prevailed at the NCAA championships last week the way that the University of Utah marched into Park City and pummel-ed pummel-ed the University of Vermont and the other pretenders to the crown of college ski racing supremacy you have to think about John Higgins. . . Higgins was the captain of the University of Utah ski team. A two-time All-American. But Higgins didn't make the NCAA team this year because Roo Harris and Pat Miller, coaches at the University Uni-versity of Utah, were looking to put a serious stop to playing the Bridesmaid Blues as they have the past two years. Nobody likes to be second especially if you're talking about two years in a row. "We were fifth once, and one year we scored only five points in alpine, and then we were second two years," Harris explained after the Utes blew the meet open the third day of the four-day meet. Up to that time it was a virtual fistfight with both combatants rolling along the pavement, one ramming a rock into the other's head while the seemingly downed victim rose and bit the nose off his assailant. Then came the slalom. The fateful slalom. But we're getting ahead of the story here. Back to Higgins. John Higgins is the sort of guy you'd like your sister to mess around with. A nice guy. When the University of Utah "Brain Trust" Roo Harris and Pat Miller recruited re-cruited former U.S. National Junior Team racers Scott Hoffman and Albert Inna-morati, Inna-morati, not many people thought it meant someone like Higgins, who had made the Ail-American team two years, would be reduced to forerunning courses at the NCAA Championships. But that's exactly what happened. In college ski racing, only five members of a team can qualify for the national championships, and on top of that, only the top three times of any one team in an alpine race (or the 15 kilometer cross-country race, for that matter) qualify quali-fy for points. The point system is fairly simple. You get 20 points for first place and 19 points for second place and so on down to 20th place. However, if three of your teammates already have scored, as was the case with the University of Vermont when they blew Utah away in the giant slalom, then the other two racers don't get a point regardless of how they placed. And the chances of the other teams that showed up en masse obviously was minimal after that first day on Park City's Ladies G.S. run. Vermont had come with the Big Guns: John Addison Teague, a former U.S. Development De-velopment Team racer; Tor Melander, a refugee from the Swedish Ski Team where he had played sidekick to Ingemar Stenmark before deciding to go to an American Ameri-can college where he could really kick some butts; Pete Murphy, another former U.S. Development Team recruit; re-cruit; Chris Mikell, an Ail-American; Ail-American; and one more ringer, Dave Bean. Believe this: Vermont was loaded and looking for trouble. And the conditions on the Ladies G.S. were remarkably remark-ably similar to Vermont boilerplace, the stuff that made Billy Kidd an Olympic champion, the same stuff that encouraged him to move from Stowe, Vermont to Steamboat, Colorado. It's not that the University of Utah did that badly the first day it's just that Vermont did that much better. Scott Hoffman was a true ace in the hole for the Utes. Hoffman was in sixth place after the first run. Somehow, he'd run past a gate and picked up the pole as he passed it, waving the flag like a madman in a wild wind before he was able to discard it after getting through the next gate. "I must have lost at least a second,ori that mistake," Hoffman said before his second run. "Now I know that I'll just have to get on it this run." That's exactly what he did, barreling down the course as if possessed, catapulting toward his first All-American plaque. Hoffman Hoff-man finished in second place. The top three finishers are first team All-Ameri-cans. Albert Innamorati, the other Utah Team U.S. Development De-velopment squad defector, was in sixth place after the two-run giant slalom. Bjorn Gefle, who had been on the World Cup for Norway, racing against the likes of such notables as Phil and Steve Mahre and Ingemar Stenmark, was seveth for Utah. Not bad. The Utes were second, sixth and seventh. But not good enough. Tor Melander, the Swedish skier for Vermont, was the winner. He was followed by teammate John Teague in third place and Pete Murphy in eighth place. Another Catamount (we're talking about the University of Vermont now) was in 10th place. But his points didn't count, thank you, since three teammates were in front of him. SCOt I llttl t lll.il! The University of Colorado, Colora-do, which has either held the title or shared it for seven seasons, was back in fourth place after Middlebury College. Col-lege. The Golden Buffalos of Colorado have been put to the wall this year thanks to a 40 percent budget cutback. It was plain from the first day that the Buffs were going to be spoilers, and that their former glory was just that-former. that-former. Still, even though Colorado didn't have the depth, they did throw a scare into the ranks when they finished that first run of giant slalom with three men within striking strik-ing distance. "What I needed was for three or at least two of my people to finish in the top five," Tim Hinderman said. But the coach of the CU team didn't get it. Although one of his racers was in second place after the first run, he fell and eliminated himself in the second run. Only Seth Bayer came up with the goods for Colorado with a fifth place in giant slalom and later in the slalom, third place. Teams take to x-country skis Utah was down three points going into the 15-kilometer run in Deer Valley Thursday. Wyoming and Colorado were out of the picture they simply didn't have the depth to compete in a multiple entrant meet with Utah and Vermont. The final results proved that out. It was one of those days that cross-country coaches dread. The sun was breaking out and then it was suddenly cold and miserable. Then the sun was out again with its warm rays visibly breaking through a fine mist of snow as it descended to the valley floor. Utah elected to put their strongest racers toward the end of the 55-man pack. The anchor man was Bernt Lund, a smiling Norwegian with a diamond in his left earlobe. It happens that the rest of the Utah team had been fighting a cold or something worse. And the track wasn't the kind to give the Utes as much advantage as they'd hoped for. The judges decided to cut out a good portion of the uphill climbs because coming com-ing down the other sides was downright hell-raising. Also, even though a few Chamber of Commerce types were crowing about it, there wasn't enough snow. TheUniversity of Vermont has three All-Americans on their cross-country team. Some of them are members of the U.S. Ski Team (since there doesn't seem to be a problem for nordic racers to be a member of a college team and at the same time ski for the United States team, even though administrative adminis-trative policy has largely prohibited alpine skiers from doing both). Vermont's cross-country runners came up with fifth, sixth and eighth. Pal Sjul-stad Sjul-stad led, with sixth place finisher Jon Zdelich, seven seconds behind him at 51:32. Eighth place finisher Todd Kempainen ran a 51:57. Utah didn't do so well, but they didn't do badly, either. Lund came out of the start and immediately fell down after crashing into two racers who were finishing their first lap on the course. Then, a few kilometers away from the finish, a coach mistakenly told him he was behind the leaders and had to really zip, so Lund put everything he had into it and fell just as he crossed the finish line. He was almost a minute ahead of the field with a 49:48:6. First place. His next two teammates of the four others who finished were Trygve Mikkelsen in ninth and Oyvind Solvang in twelfth. Solvang's brother, Trond, was the second place finisher overall, representing represent-ing Montana State University Univer-sity After two events, Vermont .wi ahead of Utah by 90 to ;):". The Catamounts had 1 R w. . it . . r a . ft . i n i fmL v ' f t if : .in Berndt Lund expresses his joy alter clinching the NCAA championship lor Utah. picked up two more points on the Utes. If you're the sort of person who indulges in guesswork, it might have been a different story if Vermont had started in the back of the pack. Maybe not. Maybe it was just bad wax and leave it at that. Maybe both teams were lucky. Colorado picked up some points and moved into third with 50 total points. Wyoming Wyo-ming was a point behind Montana State, which was showing some surprising muscle with 37 points. Middlebury Mid-dlebury and Alaska-Anchorage (which brought a strong cross-country team) were in the backwaters of the competition: com-petition: possible spoilers like Wyoming and Colorado, but the chances of getting to the top were virtually nil. Day Three: Slalom Then it was back to the Ladies G.S. for the second time to run slalom at the Park City Resort on Friday. Utah was confident they would demonstrate their prowess once and for all. Still, Vermont had come with the number one and two college slalom racers in the East and let's face it, the East is where ski racers are grown. You don't find a Burke Mt. Academy up Alta Canyon. After the first run the Utes had three skiers in the top five. Gefle was third, Mark Halvorson was fourth and Hoffman was just where he wanted to be, lurking in fifth, a half-a-second out of the money. The pressure was on. Vermont's ski racers were in a bad position, and, according accord-ing to their head coach, the best they could do under the conditions was save a full-on disaster and go for the near disaster. John Teague, the giant slalom champion from last year, was in 16th place. Tor Melander was in 10th. Chris Mikkel was 1.3 seconds out in 11th place. Pete Murphy and David Bean were out so far that they were virtually worthless to the Catamounts, since both had skied off the course and came back to cross the line 20 to 40 seconds off the leaders. "They had four skiers so that meant they could lose one but we knew we had to have all three of our guys stand up and ski well at the same time, "Vermont coach Pat LaCasse said. So they did. They skied well but they didn't do as well as Utah. The Utes came up with first and second place with Hoffman Hoff-man and Halvorson. Gefle blew out of the course and the pressure was put on Per Christian Nicolaysen, who responded by moving up from 14th to 11th. The Utes went up on the Catamounts by 15 points, 139 to 124. "It was the breakthrough that we needed," Roo Harris explained. "I knew that the quality of our slalom skiersas ski-ersas well as Wyoming and Colorado would be a fact or. Colorado's Seth Bayer again led the Buffs with his third place finish after winning the first run. Steve Nelson followed in fourth place to give CU their first true punch of the series, garrett Walker completed the CU effort with 14th place. Wyoming picked up fifth, eighth, and 10th. The University Uni-versity of Colorado's points totaled 92 as they picked up 42 points, second behind Utah's 49. Wyoming had 75.5 points alter picking up 39.5 points in slalom, third best of the day. Vermont held on the second, although their slalom team was fourth best. Montana State and Middle-bury Middle-bury fought it out for fifth place with Middlebury at 48 points and MSU with 52.5. Down to the Wire So, even though the University Univer-sity of Utah had the edge on the NCAA championship, it still came down to the last day of the competiton before they could come up with the goods. The Utes had to keep within striking distance of Vermont in the cross-country relay in Deer Vally. If Vermont was first then Utah had to come in second. That's exactly how it happened. hap-pened. For a moment, it appeared that Utah might not be able to pull it off. By the third lap of the 7.5 kilometer course, the Utes were not in second place, and Vermont most assuredly was in first place. The Utah anchor man was Berndt Lund, the freshman from Norway who had won the 15-kilometer run by more than a minute. That was the key. In the first lap, Utah fell behind to Vermont by more than a minute. That time difference was picked up by the second Utahn, runner Oyvind Solvang, who whittled whit-tled 30 seconds off Vermont's one-minute-and-three-second lead Solvang's 7.5-kilometer time was second fastest of the day, and Lund's 25:33 was more than enough for Utah to coast into second place and their first-ever NCAA skiing championship. Utah won with 183 points to Vermont's 172 points, even though Vermont won all the events as a team, except the slalom where they faltered badly, linsihing fourth. Then, after Utah and Vermont came Colorado, 113 points; Wyoming 105.5; Middlebury, 57; Montana State, 52.5; Alaska -Anchorage. 46; Dartmouth, Dart-mouth, 32; Northern Michigan, Michi-gan, 26; Alaska-Fairbanks. 22; Minnesota, 16; New Hampshire, 11; St. Lawrence, Law-rence, 4; and Williams, 1. "It took us seven years to put it together," coach Pat Miller said. "You have to give credit to Vermont. They're a great team. We just put it together finally." Long Beach trades bifocals for caviar during Grand Prix Prior to 1974, if anyone thought of Long Beach, California and hardly anyone did they thought of it as Southern California's old folks' home, the original Sun City, Iowa's seaport, 400,000 citizens nodding in the sun along with the oil hogsheads. On a clear day, there was still nothing to see. Dubuque with palm trees. Color it gray. The nice thing about it was, it was sinking into the sea several inches a year. Some day, they'd have to move the Iowa picnic inland. The gag went that Long Beach bought the Queen Mary because they needed something that could float. It was the third largest city in California, and the average temperature was 70 and the average age, 91. Its symbol was the mobile home and the pacemaker battery. A city full of ear trumpets. Wheelchair, U.S.A. The Townsend Plan started here. It's about as dissimilar a place to Monte Carlo as you could find, a city that retired 35 years ago. You can imagine, then, the incredulity with which it greeted the proposal of a young Englishman (he wasn't even 40), that the city of Long Beach become the only community west of Monte Carlo to hold a Grand Prix motor race. No one had ever confused Long Beach with the French Riviera before, and most of the residents had not driven any automobile that did not have a tiller in it, but Christopher Pook thought the seawall along Long Beach Harbor would be an ideal place to hold a world championship motorcar race. The natives were hostile. "Why don't you take it to Torrance people like to sleep here Sunday afternoons," they told him. When he told them he wanted "to put Long Beach on the map," he reported that it was on the map. "You just go to Des Moines and turn left." Like everyone else in Long Beach, Pook wasn't born there. The only difference was, he didn't come from Cedar Rapids, he came from Somerset, a corner of the world that is forever England. Chris was in the travel business, and it pained him when he said he was from Long Beach and people would ask him "Is that near a big city?" The residents of Long Beach were not the only ones dubious about the promotion. Well-meaning friends asked him where he by Ilichard Ilarnum-Keere poits Jomriaal intended to get his clientele from and, when Pook told them "from Beverly Hills," they told him, "Nobody in Beverly Hills knows how to get to Long Beach." The first Long Beach Grand Prix, in 1976, was such an artistic success that the promoters lost a million and a half on it. Local dignitaries thought Chris Pook's new address would then be General Delivery, somewhere in Rio, but Pook manfully called on his creditors, paid them off at 35 cents on the dollar and stock options. The second Grand Prix, which was won by Clay Regazzoni, who was to become paralyzed in the 1980 Long Beach race, firmly established it and Long Beach as a fixture in the International sporting scene. Over 182,000 people saw the 1980 race. Toyota now underwrites it, but it underwrites itself. On race weekend, Long Beach is awash with Gucci fashions, Mediterranean playboys with gold necklaces and trench coats thrown over their shoulders, who hold their cigarette holders upside down, German barons in cowboy hats, countesses, gigolos, Caribbean dictators, oil sheiks and probably an international jewel thief or two. More monacles than Hitler's general staff. Long Beach is Monaco West for a week. The shuffleboard courts are quiet as The Beautiful People pour into Long Beach airport where the jets disgorge mink coats, diamond earrings, and $400,000 racing machines. One oil baron even bought a Maine lobster, shipped it to his chef in Paris, who cooked it and shipped it to Long Beach for a cocktail party at least one Long Beach crustacean who's been to Paris before he died. For one weekend, the city shucks its bifocals-and-walking-stick-image for the champagne and caviar crowd. Long Beach hasn't seen that many people under 60 since the Japanese surrendered. Long Beach now takes its place alongside Zandvoort, Monaco, Hockenheim, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires, Rio do Janeiro, and Portugal. The Rose Bowl put Pasadena on the map, the Mardi Gras, New Orleans, but it took the Grand Prix to pry Long Beach out of Iowa, at least for a week when Los Angeles, lor a change, is "that fun little city on the other end of the freeway where people go to die." 1981 Los Angeles Times He chose college over USST Ogden's Scott Hoffman casts out that sidelong glance, that smile which seems to come up to you from an angle, and you can tell that the former U.S. Ski Team member is happy. "I've always wanted to be an All-American, and now I've made it," he explains to a television reporter who has grabbed him before the deluge of reporters overwhelm him. They have gone outside of the lodge at the Park City Resort for an interview. Hoffman, the diminuitive ski racer, has led the University of Utah to a position of contention for the national championships. It wasn't easy. The Utes were behind the University of Vermont, last year's champions, cham-pions, which held live of the top 10 positions after the first run of giant slalom. Although the Utes brought Hoffman to the Salt Lake campus this year, along with another former National Junior U.S. Ski Team member, Albert Innamorati, it appears the team is in trouble after each of the 45 racers the cream of the crop in America's colleges have raced down the Ladies G.S. run. "It looked pretty bad for a while there," Hoffman agrees. "I got caught up on a gate right there on the knoll, where the course changes directions, and I carried the gate right down the course as far as the next gate. That must have cost me at least a second. ' ' So Hoffman was in sixth place, six-tenths of a second behind the leader, and if he wanted to be a first team All-American, he had to come back and place within the top three racers in combined time after the second run on a different course this one more technical. "It was a more turny course," he said later. "I knew I had to get on it, so I just let it go." Butch Hoffman, Scott's father and coach, was there on the side of the hill, standing on a platform with Phil Jones, Park City's Mountain manager, watching as his son charged down the course. "I thought he did fine," Butch Hoffman said after the run. "He had to make up quite a bit of time." In the world of international ski racing, which Scott Hoffman has forsaken for college racing, six-tenths of a second can be the difference between the winner and a ski racer 10 places down the finish list. Hoffman knew what he had to do. And he did it, finishing in second place. Hoffman took a break from his college studies earlier this winter and attended the World Cup races in Aspen, where he was the third best American finisher. For a time, last year before the Olympic team was picked, he felt sure that he was going to be representing the United States at Lake Placid. "Early in the year I beat Phil and Steve Mahre in some time trials back at Killington (Vermont)," he said. "I was skiing pretty well. But then I seemed to fall off some." Still, at the Aspen races, Hoffman finished right behind the Mahres. "I think I'm skiing more consistently since I started going to school," the green-eyed ski racer explains. "I've learned a couple of things and I really think I've improved." He says he thinks Utah is stronger in the slalom than in giant slalom so they should pick up some points there ( they were behind by three points, 51-48, after the first day of the four-day event). "And our cross country team is really very good, so we're hoping to win," he says, his voice soft and almost trailing away in the slight breeze before the words reach the ears of his listeners. "I think in the past I might have been a little too eager and made some mistakes," Hoffman says of his ski racing career before deciding on the University of Utah. "Today, what helped me is all the people on the side of the run who were yelling. I could hear them just as I started to work the flat. It was really neat." One person who has been an inestimable help, Hoffman explained, is Spencer Eccles, who provided moral encouragement and financial assistance during the trying times of his international racing wars. "Last year when the team asked the National Junior Team racers to come up with some money, he helped me. It was really a super thing. I probably couldn't have skied without him." This year, however, the balancing lever which pushed Hoffman away from skiing with the U.S. Ski Team and moving onto college was the bill for $8,000 he knew it was going to cost him to compete. It's part of the U.S. Ski Team's requirement of young racers, or their ski clubs or sponsors, that they provide some of the financing for their careers, and Hoffman just didn't think he could come up with that kind of money or ask anyone else to donate it. He was named the outstanding young ski racer in America two years ago, and his career was moving steadily upward. But like Roxanne Toly, the 17-year-old downhiller from Park City who is now skiing for the U.S. Ski Team in Europe, Hoffman thinks asking the athletes to pay to play is a bit much. But Hoffman still hopes to continue to improve his ski racing ability and make the U.S. Olympic Team in three years. "That's one of my dreams," he said. "And this year, when I was doing so well on the Nor-Am circuit in Colorado, the (U.S. Ski) Team asked me if I'd like to go back to Europe and compete, but I felt that I had a commitment to the University of Utah that I had to honor. I hope that one day I'll be able to be back skiing for the Ski Team but, at that moment, I really thought I was obligated to stay with the University." Hoffman's reward is that he's been able to live out a part of the dream he's always dreamed: he's an All-American, Ogden's answer to basketball players Danny Ainge of BYU and Danny Vranes of Utah. The other part of his dream, competing in the Olympic Games, is still down the road some three years but the way Scott Hoffman is acting out his fantasies these days, that dream appears solidly within reach. SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE |