Olympic Dreams: Locals compete in Winter Games

Olympians Shannon Bahrke, Julia Mancuso, Marco Sullivan, Hannah Teter, Stacey Cook, Nate Holland, Elena Hight and Daron Rahlves head an elite group of athletes from the Tahoe-Truckee region who will represent the United States at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver Feb. 12 to 28. Joining them are Errol Kerr, representing Jamaica, and Tim Jitloff, a resident of Reno who cut his teeth on Tahoe’s slopes.

Shannon Bahrke
Moguls
Tahoe City’s Shannon Bahrke, 29, makes her third trip to the Olympics competing in Moguls on the U.S. Freestyle Team. Bahrke won a silver medal at the 2002 games with hopes of returning to the podium.
Bahrke is distinctive with her glitter eye shadow, hot pink streaks in her hair and high-energy style and has skied her way to World Championships medals, World Cup wins, a World Cup title and U.S. titles.
She came back strong from a knee injury in 2007 to mark 2009 with consistent results highlighted by a sixth-place moguls finish at Worlds. At the 2006 Olympics, she finished 10th in moguls.

Stacey Cook
Alpine Skiing
Truckee’s Stacey Cook, 25, who skis on the Mammoth Mountain Team, started skiing at age 4 in the Truckee recreation department’s Buddy Werner League. She didn’t get excited about racing, however, until she joined Northstar’s Real Racing Program and won her first race. She added Downhill in 2003 when she made the move to Mammoth, then won the NorAm overall and Downhill titles in 2004 before joining the 2006 Olympic team, where she finished 19th in Downhill and 23rd in Giant Slalom.
After a slow start to the 2009 season, Cook was gifted a slot on the 2009 World Championships squad and did not disappoint, hammering home a surprise ninth in downhill, 16th in super combined (with sixth in the Downhill) and 22nd in super G.

Elena Hight
Halfpipe
Elena Hight, 20, of South Lake Tahoe is expected to be a strong competitor in the halfpipe. Hight has been on her game this season with a sixth place finish at the Winter X Games last month. The returning Olympian finished in sixth at the 2006 Games.
In 2003, Hight became the first woman to land a 900 in competition at only 13-years-old. At a hair over 5-feet-tall, seeing Hight boost out of a superpipe is incredible, to say the least. Then, to watch her stomp out the most difficult combinations, it becomes evident why this young rider is known to be one of the most progressive in the sport.

Nate Holland
Snowboardcross
Five-time X Games Gold Medalist and Olympian Nate Holland, 31, of Olympic Valley is the powerhouse contender on the Snowboardcross.
“In 2006 I won this for the first time in my career and then had a wreck in Torino,” Holland said. “I just have to get in the gate, start riding and see where I land. There’s one thing for sure – I’m going to ride my heart out there.”
Born and raised in northern Idaho, Holland developed a taste for adventure at a young age, and that has carried him through to his career in one of the most daring sports there is. A snowboardcross specialist, Holland defines the sports chaotic style going all-out in every race.
Holland finished third in the 2007 World for Snowboard Cross, and took the 14th spot at the 2006 Olympics.

Tim Jitloff
Alpine Skiing
Four-event skier and 2005 junior world champion Tim Jitloff, 25, of Reno, like so many Lake Tahoe tykes, was on skis by age 2 at Alpine Meadows and free-skied through most of his youth, making his first World Championships in the 2006-07 season. His early free-skiing is paying off as he continues to show talent across the spectrum – in Slalom and Giant Slalom, Super G and Downhill.
Jitloff kicked off the 2009 season with a bang, scoring his first World Cup points in the first race of the season with 19th in Giant Slalom at Soelden. He scored again in Giant Slalom at Beaver Creek, in Slalom at Alta Badia and shocked the entire World Cup field with fifth in Sestriere, skiing from 18th after the first run.
In addition, he nabbed a pair of top-30 finishes in Slalom and Giant Slalom at the World Championships, defended his U.S. Giant Slalom title and took the combined crown.

Errol Kerr
Ski Cross, Jamaica
A resident of Truckee, 23-year-old Errol Kerr has dual citizenship of the United States and Jamaica, and will represent the island nation in the Winter Games. Kerr trains at Alpine Meadows.
Kerr took the fifth place spot at the FIS Ski Cross at Sugar Bowl earlier this month and is primed for competition in Vancouver. He made his World Cup debut in 2008 with a 12th place finish, following up with a 10th place spot at the Ski Cross World Championship in 2009.
Kerr became interested in Ski Cross after hearing about the world championships at Squaw Valley USA when he was 11. “I heard about it, and my mom signed me up. I almost qualified to the rounds,” Kerr says.

Julia Mancuso
Alpine skiing
Reigning Olympic Giant Slalom champion Julia Mancuso, 25, of Olympic Valley returns to Vancouver for her third Olympic competition.
Mancuso was on skis at age 2 at Squaw Valley, but didn’t race until she was 8, and then she started making up for lost time. The four-event athlete started World Cup racing and was a NorAm champion at 16, competed in the Olympics at 17, set a U.S. mark for Junior World Championships medals before she was out of her teens, and started her 20s by capturing two World Championships medals and establishing a record for most consecutive U.S. championships top-3s. And then she led the first run of the 2006 Olympic GS, and rolled to gold.
The 2009 winter proved to be a challenge for Mancuso with nagging back problems, who missed the World Cup podium for the first time since 2006, closing the season with her 10th U.S. championships (tying Bode Miller for the most of all-time).

Daron Rahlves
Ski Cross
Olympian Daron Rahlves, 36, of Truckee seems bound for Vancouver despite a crash on Jan. 31 during the Winter X Games. He was treated for a dislocated hip, a repeat injury for this athlete, but doctors were optimistic about a quick recovery.
Known as the most successful U.S. male downhiller, Rahlves retired from U.S. Ski Team racing after 13 years on the Alpine Team following the 2006 Olympic season.
Looking to continue skiing he made a transition into big mountain free skiing and ski cross comps. It wasn’t long before Rahlves, who had 12 World Cup wins, 28 podiums and was the winner of the famed Hahnenkamm Downhill in 2003, decided to get back in the gate. This time, he opted for side-by-side mayhem with other skiers in a motocross-like event on skis. Now it’s Ski Cross and it’s the newest Olympic freestyle event for Vancouver in Rahlves fourth Olympics.

Macro Sullivan
Alpine Skiing
World Cup winner Marco Sullivan, 29, of Truckee has tasted the success of dedicating himself to his sport. But, for the one-time Olympian, being Vancouver Bound will help him reach the apex of his career.
“Vancouver Bound to me, the first thing I think of is fun. It’s the Olympics – the culmination of all the training we do all year long,” Sullivan said.
The speed racer achieved four top-10 finishes on the World Cup circuit during the 2009 season, one of which was a third place finish at the famed Lauberhorn downhill in Wengen, Switzerland – the longest on the World Cup circuit.
Sullivan grew up in Lake Tahoe and was on a ski hill from his earliest memory, coming down a snow-covered gravel hill in his backyard at age 3. He learned to go fast on some of the gnarliest terrain at Squaw Valley and was a promising four-event skier – he was bronze medalist in slalom at Junior Worlds in 2000 – before he started to concentrate on downhill. He won the 2001 NorAm overall, Downhill and Super G championships and was in the Olympics a year later before winning his first World Cup in 2008. This will be his third trip to the Olympics.

Hannah Teter
Halfpipe
South Lake Tahoe’s Hannah Teter, 23, is the reigning Olympic Halfpipe Champion, winning gold at the 2006 Games. In only five years as a professional, Hannah has won every major halfpipe competition in the world with the exception of the U.S. Open.
Hannah was on fire as she took the podium at nearly every competition she competed in during the 2009 season. But, for Teter, winning a Grand Prix, finishing second in a World Cup in the 2006 halfpipe, and finishing third in the 2010 pipe was about much more than athletic success – it was about a village of Kirindon in Kenya.
She has been sponsoring the village with the production of her maple syrup for over two years, and in 2009, Teter donated all of her prize money to the village to fund a water filtration system. This year, she plans to continue donating her prize money to finish the water project and begin new projects in Kirindon.

Television broadcast
NBC will be broadcasting Olympic coverage of the Winter Games on local NBC stations, MSNBC, USA Network, CNBC, Universal Sports and Universal Sports HD. To find a listing for local broadcasts, visit www.nbcolympics.com and enter your ZIP code in the right side near the top. It will give you a schedule based on your television provider (satellite, cable, etc.).

Local radio show broadcast
Local radio personality JD Hoss on 101.5FM will take his popular series “Living The Tahoe Life” on the road to Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Games. Hoss will be reporting live from Whistler/Vancouver on 101.5FM daily from 8 to 9 a.m.; noon to 1 p.m.; and from 4 to 5 p.m. beginning Feb. 12. For more information, visit www.livingthetahoelife.com.

Olympic Zone at Squaw Creek
KCRA 3, the NBC television affiliate in Sacramento, which broadcasts to northern California including the Lake Tahoe region, will be broadcasting its Olympic Zone show live from Resort at Squaw Creek from Feb. 12 to 28. KCRA’s Olympic Zone show, which will be hosted by on-air talents Chris Riva and Mae Fesai, will be aired in the 30-minute time slot preceding NBC’s nightly prime time coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Visitors, residents and guests of Resort at Squaw Creek are invited to watch the show being shot live at the resort, and participate as an audience member.

The Olympic Zone show will give viewers updates on Olympic performances, with reports from Deirdre Fitzpatrick and Brian Hickey, insight into stories of local Olympians, and a flavor for the mountain lifestyle in which many of the Olympians are bred. The show’s schedule will be posted on Resort at Squaw Creek’s online event calendar and in the resort’s lobby. Broadcasts take place in the evenings, from 7:30 to 8 p.m. weekdays, with slight variations on the weekends. The opening night show on Feb. 12 takes place from 7 to 7:30 p.m. in Sandy’s Pub and the resort will have nightly viewing parties of the show and NBC’s 2010 Vancouver Olympics coverage.