On a hot summer day in 1989, I tagged along with a group of sport leaders for a hike through the sagebrush up to what is now the Utah Olympic Park. Our mission that day was to visit one of the proposed ski jumping sites for a future Olympics.

As we trekked up from S.R. 224, our eyes gravitated to a mountainside off to the west. It had a broad, massive face with a fall line that never stopped. We visualized a giant slalom racing line down the steep pitch. “You could probably run a super-G down there,” said my boss, U.S. Ski Association leader Howard Peterson.

Our business that day was to locate a ski jump. But I never forgot my first glance at what became known as West Peak.

Fast forward a few generations later, and that vision is now becoming a reality. While Park City has a rich alpine ski racing history dating back to the days of America’s Opening, our alpine terrain hasn’t been suited to speed events like super-G and downhill. Until now!

When the new Spencer F. Eccles Olympic Mountain Center, with its Gamechanger high-speed quad lift, was dedicated last March, it opened up a new world for Park City athletes. Decades ago, local athletes could rip down Willys Run at Park City Mountain, and later CB’s. But speeding down the aptly-named Olympic Hopeful run last week, athletes debuted an entirely new era with the first FIS-level international speed event ever held in Park City.

“I’m not sure a lot of the guys on race day were really ready for what the super-G produced,” said Parkite Stefan Brennwald, who won the second of two races. “No one had a chance to ski on it, and, really, no hill out in the west has been that steep for super-G.”

Brennwald, the son of Olympian Heidi Voelker, grew up racing around Park City Mountain, ripping around with his local buddies in Dar Hendrickson’s Devo Program before graduating up to the Park City Ski Team. Over the years, the training repertoire included early morning runs down the flats of Payday and steeper GS lines down CB’s. But nothing compared to what he experienced in last week’s speed races.

From the first time he scoped out the runs, Park City Ski & Snowboard Alpine Director Tommy Eckfeldt knew it was something special. Collaborating with Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation COO Calum Clark, they masterminded bringing a FIS-level speed event to town.

“It was a beast of a challenge,” said Eckfeldt. “You know, when you schedule a speed event, it snows, right?”

True to form, the opening women’s events were run under clear skies. A day later, the men arrived to find a few inches of snow on the racing surface.

While racing is ultimately what it’s all about, the underlying benefit of the new Mountain Center is its Gamechanger chair lift that whisks athletes from the finish line to the starting gate in just over four minutes.

“It’s a great venue because it’s such a quick turnaround with the high-speed quad, so you can get so many laps in, which is unusual, especially for speed,” said U.S. Ski Team World Cup racer Mary Bocock, one of a host of national team forerunners to check it out. “It’s so hard to find tracks like that across the country. It’ll be really good to develop speed skiers starting at a younger age, which has always kind of been hard to do.”

Bocock grew up racing at Snowbird and in the Rowmark Academy program. Rowmark was a partner in the development of the center with Park City Ski & Snowboard, the University of Utah, and the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation, along with The George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation. 

Skiing volume is a huge element of training, said Eckfeldt. With a dedicated high speed, he figures it’s doubling or even tripling the training volume and with a greater focus on working the skills necessary to be successful.

Over the past three decades, there’s been a lot of talk about the legacy left by the 2002 Games.

“This just going to continue to provide additional resources — it’s going even deeper into our pipeline,” said Eckfeldt. “This year, we started a 5- to 8-year-olds program, with the 7- and 8-year-old program being right here at the Utah Olympic Park. It outfits our youth with more resources and tools to be the best skiers they can be.”