The World Cup Comes to Rossland Video

Transcript:

[Rossland Museum & Discovery Centre logo on a white screen]

Robin Valentine: We did the Canadian championships many years slalom, GS, Super G, Downhill. The downhill was always the biggest one because it took so much time to set up.

Libby Martin: Actually my first race was the Canadian Nationals in 1967. Here at Red Mountain on the face of Red. And there was no groomers so we had to flatten out all the moguls – we shaved them off. And I worked on that race – it was hand timing. The Canadian Nationals: hand timing. And we stood in a pit at the bottom of the course. I can remember standing there going with my watch all of us went *gestures with her hand* making sure we were synchronized. That’s really fun. Obviously before your time.

Fiona Martin: Clearly (laughs).

Patricia Stevens: And then we had the du Maurier which was the big one.

Nancy Greene Raine: The World Cup here in in 1968 was it was amazing.

Robin Valentine: And that was a big project. We set up an office in Rossland and we hired office staff and weasel workers for setting up the course and, you know, it was it was a big project. It took the whole community to put it on.

Libby Martin: And it took huge numbers of volunteers. I mean it was the first World Cup in, to be held in Canada.

Nancy Greene Raine: Everybody in town got involved. And you could be carrying bags for people that were being taken up to a billet’s house, or you could as kids you you just carrying stuff up and down the mountain for, you know, equipment fencing whatever.

Patricia Stevens: My mother-in-law was making sandwiches. I was helping with the timing; I was a hand timer. But they had electronic timing too, but they had to have backup timing so they had it all set up they can just send it down to Teck and then Teck would do all the calculations and stuff. That was the first time the results were out the night of the banquet.

Libby Martin: And why? Because of Cominco down the road. That’s where it was done.

Patricia Stevens: A lot of the people thought that it was the previous year’s results but it wasn’t. It was that that result. They had it all figured out how to do it so quickly.

Don Stevens: I guess the first bit of racing I remember is when they did run the du Maurier race because Mom and Dad were so busy with the race we stayed with my grandparents. And we just go up to the hill and watch it at that point. I forget, I would have been five years old then. That was sort of our first experience really seeing it.

Libby Martin: I was supposed to carry poles for the French coach who was setting the men’s GS and it was memorable because it was so icy. A friend of ours in the mountaineering club actually hiked up with his ice axe and crampons to watch the race it was that icy. The men’s course was at the top of top of the cliff and I remember being absolutely terrified side slipping down this icy slope I was sure I was going to drop the poles. As we were coming down there were people skiing and he said “you mean the public is allowed to ski this run?” That’s my biggest personal memory of the World Cup. Huge crowds. Five, six thousand people.

Nancy Greene Raine: And that was the best World Cup race of the year. I think there were more people at the at the race in Rossland lining the course, it was huge! There was more people here than there was at the Olympics.

Libby Martin: That was the one where Nancy Greene actually clinched the World Cup for the second year in a row.

Nancy Greene Raine: You know, it was on the calendar. It was just going to be so much fun. and you know it’s nerve-wracking to come home and race in front of your hometown crowds, it doesn’t always go well. Right after the Olympics I started winning and I won, I think I won all the races for about five or six weeks in a row, one after another. World Cups… and I was really on a high. And in Sun Valley, I’m standing there: it was the last race before Rossland and I’m standing at the finish and I’ve I’ve got the winning time, and some young American’s coming down from the back of the pack with a hot time. So I’m standing there thinking, you know, wow one of these days they’re gonna beat me. And I’m at the finish. Well, I won the race – she was probably in the top five or something – but I started thinking and I thought, you know, I probably should, I probably should retire at the end of the season. Up until then, everybody was asking me “are you, when are you going to retire?” “I have no plans to retire.” Because I sort of thought it would jinx you. You, but at that moment I said, you know what, I’m ready to retire. The next time somebody asked me was a few hours later in Spokane in a interview. You know, “what are your plans? Are you going to retire at the end of the season?” I said “yes, I have. I’ve decided yes I will, I’ve decided to retire.” Well by the time I got to Rossland, my mother was saying “what did you do? Everybody’s phoning all over the country you know you’re retiring!” And all this stuff. well I still had I said, “no, no, first I gotta win the World Cup. It’s not for for sure yet. Once I won a race in the du Maurier I could clinch, pretty much clinch, the World Cup. Which is what I did. But yeah, it was fun. I crashed in the slalom. I really threw my neck out. First time my life I went to a chiropractor. I was pretty sore the next day, but I won the race by a pretty good margin. And and then I won at Heavenly Valley and and retired. For me the most amazing thing was to show off your home Club to all these great European racers that you’ve been racing with for five or six years. And the fact that they ran a fantastic race. Perfect. You know, the hospitality was great. They had a big parade. I woke up in the morning to music on, you know, “Hello Nancy, it’s so nice to have you back where you belong,” on the radio. People singing. It was was amazing.

Du Maurier video narrator: Festival time in Nancy Greeneville, otherwise known as Rosslnad, British Columbia. With a good reason: Canada’s proudest town [Music] [Applause] [Music].

Interviewer (off screen): What did you get out of these kind of these projects?

Robin Valentine: Nothing (laughs).

Sean Valentine: I did! They got time spent, yeah hard work but for us as you know as athletes it was it was unbelievable for me I was you know when they probably started I I was maybe you know closing on 10, 11, 12 and things like this and I’m watching national team athletes arrive in town and, you know, we’re just young kids chasing Steve Podborski and people like that around the ski hill. I remember we chased them through Rafters – he was trying to get away. So those kinds of things for us I mean, Stan, I would be up in the start you know and there’s National Team members and some guy asked me to kick him out of his skis – I couldn’t step him out because his bindings are, you know… so for me that was just really great to have around. So, probably didn’t show it back then but, you know, great appreciation for what went into those.

Don Stevens: There were a lot of good skiers from here that you kind of looked at, and I guess they were inspirational and that they would, you kind of knew that there you could make it to a national team or go race in Europe. it was it wasn’t a a question of boy, that would be nice to do, it was sort of like well I guess that’s the next step.

[Text which reads, “Supported by” followed with a blue logo for the Trail and District Arts Council