A First

Yesterday was a first for American ski racing: I was able to watch the Beaver Creek World Cup live on television. Not online through some shady website pulling in a live feed of Eurosport, not through universalsports.com's season pass access, but on an actual television on an actual channel when it was actually happening, all in the USA.

This is a big deal. One of the most common questions I get when I am working with kids on an ITA project is how people can watch me. Specifically, what channel. It can be a bit hard to explain the significance of the sport to someone who is used to every other relevant sport being available at any time on almost every channel. Directing someone to a pay-per-view or a European gambling site doesn't exactly grow a viewer base, so just the ability to know that someone might actually stumble upon ski racing yesterday is comforting. I would have done just about anything to have been on the other side of the lens yesterday, but standing and screaming at the television made me feel a  lot closer to the sport than I have in the last couple of months. Let's hope this type of thing continues.