Is this the only mens race in the US - if so, why is that?
With over 400 ski areas and over 50 million skier visits each year, one would think that the US would host more skiing competitions.
Welcome to the politics of the International Ski Federation (FIS)!
The FIS is dominated by the Alpine nations of Europe: Austria, France, Switzerland, Germany. And a majority of the competitors on the World Cup circuit hail from European countries, so the FIS tends to tilt the schedule toward European venues. The heritage is there: races at St. Moritz, Val d'Isere, Kitzbühel, Wengen, Val Gardena, Schladming, Åre, Alta Badia, and I could go on and on.
So the FIS tries to minimize huge travel blocks for the athletes, coaches, technicians, PR people,
et al. The way they do this is to bunch events around a few venues - you don't see many one-off, single-day tech races showing up as new events outside of central Europe. And they like North America in the early season as we tend to have more reliable weather and
far more reliable snowmaking.
So it evolved that Lake Louise's speed venue, Beaver Creek's speed venue, Aspen Mountain's speed/tech venue, and Park City's tech venue hosted early season events starting in the early 1990s. Over time, this got whittled down. Park City stopped hosting its "America's Opening" events after the hubbub of the 2002 Winter Olympics passed. When Aspen was awarded the World Cup finals for the 2016-17 season, that (combined with test events at the Pyeongchang Olympic venues) opened up additional North American opportunities both early in the season and prior to the Aspen event. That's when Killington entered the mix with their SL/GS weekend, and Squaw Valley hosted women's tech events immediately prior to Aspen.
Where Killington won favor with FIS was that, while they hosted a top-notch event on a venue that was customized to a modern FIS wish list (e.g. dedicated snowmaking system, modern high-speed lift service), Aspen fumbled by refusing to upgrade some ancient lift infrastructure. Aspen lost their traditional race, while Killington pounced and signed a 2-year extension with FIS for hosting races. While that contract has now expired, it's widely expected that Killington will host again next year, and that this stop on the tour will become more-or-less "permanent" going forward.
Now, back to why there aren't more World Cup events in North America: as well as the expense (and the reluctance of alpine powerhouse teams to travel so far from home), it comes down to scheduling.
Speed events require huge amounts of time, money, and manpower to prepare and execute. Hill prep starts weeks before the first training run. This includes snowmaking, A and B net setup, timing cabling, media cabling and platforms, network infrastructure, snow injection, grandstand installation, and many other things. Tech events can operate on a shorter schedule, but it's also a big commitment for a venue. Volunteers don't grow on trees, and some resorts have a hard time attracting able individuals to help stage ski races.
The question of additional North American events (specifically in New England) came up at one of the Killington World Cup pre-event press conferences. Tiger Shaw (head of U.S. Ski and Snowboard) said it's all down to the FIS and their schedules, but it's also dependent on willing venues. FIS likes venues that are easily accessed by traveling teams and spectators. New England is loaded with skiers (and ski racers, young and old), and is easily accessible from major airports in Boston and Montreal.
So that leaves the resorts to decide. While the new racing and training venue at Cannon's Mittersill area is truly world class (Baron's Run is homologated for World Cup GS events), it still needs infrastructure improvements (namely parking and lodges) to host a World Cup event to modern FIS standards. Waterville Valley hosted World Cups in the early 1990s, but their race hills no longer meet World Cup homologation standards). Whiteface Mountain can hold World Cup SL, GS, or SG events (their Cloudspin DH track isn't quite up to modern standards). Sugarloaf could host speed and tech events. In Quebec, Mont Tremblant and Mont-Sainte-Anne have hosted World Cup events in the past, and could hold them again. Le Massif was part of Quebec City's abortive Winter Olympic bids, and they could have their speed venue re-certified for super-G.
If one or more of these areas agree to host a World Cup, they can - and should - put in a bid.
But hosting at any of these sites - especially in the northeast - is dependent on available time (which would likely be mid-November). They can't overlap with the now-traditional Levi SL races, and the weather has to cooperate to make snow. So a tech event is the most likely thing to happen. I could see Cannon/Mittersill or one of the Quebec mountains host a tech weekend. And it has to be a weekend in order to draw crowds: Killington's 15,000-18,000 per day is helped by the fact that their races occur on a holiday weekend.
Again, all this in conjecture right now. The FIS has to show willingness to hold more events in North America. And until the December venues in Europe become more consistently unreliable in terms of snow conditions, they aren't likely to give an inch.
Just my $0.02 - YMMV.
) every kid anywhere on world, regardless if rich or poor is playing it. Every country on world has at least 2 or 3 leagues with even smallest countries having few 1000 registered players. Based on Wikipedia, 24.5mio was playing football in USA in 2015, probably more then there's skiers on World, and you have 4millions registered players. That means, are members of official clubs and US Soccer (how many members USST has?). On qualifications for World cup, there's what, 150 countries trying to get into those 30 or so, that have right to compete on World cup. Basketball is not that big, but it's still somewhere there, at least sort of. And I doubt there's more then few countries on World that one way or the other don't show on TV at least part of best basketball league on World. Skiing on the other side is sport of only few people. There's maybe 10 countries, probably even less where skiing is really developed and where it's big. Then there's another maybe another 10 countries at best case,where maybe 50% of people even know what skiing is, and where maybe 20% of them were ever skiing. So looking through numbers like this, skiing is less then just minor sport.
