The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 64

THE BOSTON GLOBE THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1995 Turn for the better Globe Ski Program director Bob Dunn gives a lesson on how to control your speed. Page 66. 64 Section KILLINGTON US downhillers -still on the rise Rasmussen, Street outings uplifting I fl i TV! 1 ml 1 f. 4 1 -m mm 1 oiJicrnuiuoiiu3iralVB 'ft points) and Street (309) are Nos. 1 and 2 on the world downhill list with four races to go for the season.

And then this week, still another surprise, this time on the men's side. No, not Moe or AJ Kitt this time, but 26-year-old (Cowboy) Kyle Rasmus-sen, a one-time US star-hope that the sport had all but passed by. Since his teen years that dawned with such promise a decade ago, Rasmussen spent his first few years on the US team trying to break out of the ski team doldrums and compete with the world's best downhillers. But five years out, a back injury that required a spinal fusion, a young wife and two children coming along that and very poor skiing in 1993 seemed to be showing Kyle the way out of ski racing. Then, last weekend.

Lightning struck on one of the World Cup's two toughest courses, the Lauber-horn in Wengen, Switzerland. Rasmussen had his whole game together for one shattering run that blew all the whispers of retirement into another year. The weekend was a huge one for the US team, as well as Rasmussen himself. On Saturday, at a course described as the Pebble Beach of skiing, Rasmussen set up his run with a soft, fast gliding pattern, and made the tough turns on the Lauberhorn with precision. Suddenly, he had won.

Suddenly, SKI NOTEBOOK, Page 67 By Tony Chamberlain GLOBE STAFF It may go all the way back to Ed Swift's Sports Illustrated story about a year ago in which he ripped the US Ski Team so badly on the eve of the Olympics that the magazine itself was said to have become an inspiration. Swift, of course, was only deducing from the numbers. This country's skiing results for almost a decade, with few exceptions, had been gruesome. Common table talk among nearly everyone close to the sport always got around to "What's wrong with US skiing?" It may be fanciful to think of Swift's pre-Olympic article as a motivating force, but it sure marked a turning point. What Tommy Moe, Picabo Street and Diann Roffe-Steinrotter did last February to burn up the Olympic speed tracks was one of the best of the Games.

But unlike the outburst of '84, when Americans won a slew of medals, then dropped off the edge of the Earth, the new American speedsters are still at it. Not just a factor in world skiing, but continuing to dominate as they have all year. Though the US technical skiers, slalom and GS, are still failing to post results, Hilary Lindh (340 nJ til ITllll ii 1 new 9i minion okyesmp is me worm first heated cabin gondola. The 2Vi-miIe lift, which was opened Dec. 10, features 140 eight-passenger cabins, complete with music and modern designs by artists from throughout the world.

Asiz able imiarovement 1' Si', US skier Kyle Rasmussen's recent World Cup victory in Switzerland has put off all talk of retirement at least another year. Killington Ski Area founder and CEO Preston Smith and Deena Prestegard, who oversaw the artwork on the cabins, take first Skyeship ride during December's grand opening. Skiing Sugarloaf for a good cause Area with the most now offers more By Tony Chamberlain GLOBE STAFF nff ILLINGTON, Vt. It was at once an embarrassment of riches, opulence befitting one's station: The I largest and richest ski area in the ml ha Northeast had erected a lift so costly that its price tag of $13 million was enough to run a smaller ski area for a number of years. The Gondola cars: works of art Each one a design created by a different artist.

The interiors, as plush as the passenger cars that brought skiers to the mountain. Heated. Wired for sound. Smooth and lovely, with a summit view of the distant countryside all the way to Okemo. That opening ceremony in mid-December, evening dresses and black ties riding up and down into the Vermont sunset with bottles of champagne, was yet another triumph for Killington founder and president Preston (Pres) Smith, who 30 years ago on the same site personally bolted the steel beams in the original gondola building.

But, as big and corporate as Killington and S-K-I have become in three decades, there was still room to be just another neighbor on a Vermont hillside. When the pastor of nearby Mission Farm -the pretty stone chapel across from the gondola building heard that fireworks were about to start, he got worried. The sheep were still out, he told John RESORT OF THE1 WEEK Clifford. Would it be OK to hold up the party long enough to round up the livestock? So, as revelers stood waiting in the twilight, sheep were rounded up into the barn before the sky burst with Killington's latest note of triumph. Of course, any entity so large that has been around for so long is bound to get some flak.

Killington has its detractors. The place is too big, too scattered. It's "mall skiing," said one respondent in a skiers' survey, echoing a frequently heard sentiment that the huge six-peak complex with its interlocking system of some 150 trails and 500,000 skier visits yearly, the longest season in the country, is far from the intimate "family experience" found at smaller areas. And, of course, it is true: Killington's modest aim for many years has been to be most things to most skiers. If it can be knocked for that, there's also plenty to praise.

Here's the other list: Most snow, most glooming, most trials, ARRABASSET VALLEY, MAINE YOU KNOW WHAT 1 kind of year it has been when the first real thrill of the ski TO weekend is the ride Friday night from downtown up to the mountain. All the way over from Augusta and the Maine Turnpike, most high-speed uphill transportation, most days of skiing (an amazing 246 days, eight months, back in the winter of '84), most lodging, most and best novice terrain and, just in case you're looking, the biggest moguls. These are found on Outer Limits, a trail that amounts to a bump-skier's pie-eating contest more than anyone possibly wants, but, once committed, you're going to do the whole thing anyway. Outer Limits is the sort of trail you ski to say you've skied it. For advanced skiers, there's lots more interesting and challenging terrain on the mountain(s).

For example, there's East Fall, an old-fashioned New England-ish trail, cranky and narrow with a sudden cliff effect thrown in just to make you think the earth has suddenly fallen out from underneath you. The cliff looks worse than it is. Flume to Cascade begins in cruiser country, then delivers a wonderful steepening effect the longer you run it. It's a really highspeed cruise that runs into some well-formed moguls that pull you in for a try. Also, Killington's glade skiing ranks with the best.

For all its vaunted snowmaking equipment, this region also gets above-average natural snowfall, a fact that becomes important to glades hounds who ski where the guns can't go. Killington has some beauties Jug Handle, Big Dipper (left side), East and West Glade and Rime, the latter two wide enough for intermediate skiers. Cruising on Killington on crowded days can be frustrating. With so many trail intersections, there always are bunches of skiers stopped to read trail maps and look at signs. Obviously, you take a yellow flag when these groups come into view, and mind the intersections.

That said, there's too much cruising on Killington to stop and enumerate trails. But the "old" mountain, meaning basically Ramshead, is the most pleasant cruising, with longer meandering trails and fewer intersects. Few mountains have the novice layout of a Killington, from its own Snowshed area that gives you plenty of peer support, to the endlessly long Juggernaut, which ends up at Northeast Passage a nice, quiet corner of the area with a separate parking lot and lift. There's plenty here to keep novices going until the time comes to pack out for the blue squares. One caveat is that you take advantage of the resort's great trail map best anywhere -to avoid slip-ups of missed reunions and groups getting split at day's end.

Yes, it is a big, complex area, but only by Eastern standards. There's no more reason to avoid Killington because of its size than to stay away from Vail, Snowmass, Park City or Mammoth. As said, base support facilities restaurants, bars, ski shops, nightclubs are many and varied. On weekend nights there's cruising enough for youngsters and oldsters, and even some places that handle both. Hot rock clubs and more intimate places exist on the same road.

And, of course, Killington is on the outskirts of Rutland, an interesting city in its own right How to get there: Follow 1-93 north to 1-89 at Bow, N.H.; take 1-89 north to White River Junction, Vt, then take Route 4 west to Killington. Features: Killington has 147 trails, slopes and glades over six peaks, and 23 lifts, including the eight-passenger gondola. Phone: (802) 422-3333, past the Belgrade Lakes and those broad openings of farm country along the way, thin snow cover showed stubble and rock bristling through, just about the way ski country looks most Octobers. But then, the last 15 miles or so, an ascent from the crossroads at Kingfield to the base elevation of Sugarloaf. Hallelujah! Winter was there.

Natural snowfall the week before augmented all the manmade snow on the mountain itself. But the aesthetic factor more important than some may think in getting us in a proper mind for skiing was there. Snow. Packed in the pines and piled on the side of the road. Snow.

As we drove higher toward the monolith, winter deepened to a full cover. By morning the wind was down, the sun almost painfilly bright, and a classic mid-winter ski weekend was under way here, as it was in a dozen areas throughout ski country. At Sugarloaf, the event of the day was the 12th-annual Celebrity Cup to benefit the Jimmy Fund of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, and if the quality of skiing did not exactly match the ineffa-bility of snow cover we skied upon, let the record show that this was also the most boffo event for fund-raising in the dozen-year history. "This year my target was $150,000 for the Jimmy Fund," said Paul Hurley, "and we raised over $200,000." Like most such events, teams race against each other down a none-too-tough GS course lower on the mountain. The teams sprinked various celebrities throughout, including several Boston sports legends: Jim Lonborg, whose sports history had a fateful intersection with 1 CHAMBERLAItj, Page 66.