Canada's Lake Louise joins prestigious club for hosts of World Cup events

Canada’s Lake Louise joins prestigious club for hosts of World Cup events{mosimage}Lake Louise in Alberta has become the first North American resort named to the Club 5+, the organization that brings together the most famous and historic World Cup alpine racing courses in the world.

The announcement was made at a news conference at Canada Olympic Park in Calgary, as Alpine Canada, the national governing body of alpine racing, introduced the 35 members of the Canadian Alpine Ski Team heading into NorAm and World Cup competition later this month.

Ken Read, president of Alpine Canada, also announced that Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, owners of the Chateau Lake Louise, has signed on as a champion-level sponsor in support of Alpine Canada’s plan to make Canada a world-leading alpine racing country by 2010.

“The CIBC Lake Louise Winterstart World Cup races have now been officially recognized as among the most historic and most prestigious in the world,” said Read, adding that Alpine Canada will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Canadian Alpine Ski Team during Canada’s only World Cup stop, November 29 to December 7.

The Lake Louise organizing committee was informed of the unanimous vote to offer Club 5 membership to Lake Louise at the fall meeting of the International Ski Federation (FIS) in Zurich, Switzerland.

Club 5 was formed more than two decades ago by the World Cup organizing committees (in conjunction with their respective ski areas) of the so-called “classic” downhills — Kitzbühel, Wengen, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Val Gardena and Val d’Isere. In recent years, the group was expanded to include Cortina d’Ampezzo, Schladming, Alta Badia, Kranjska Gora and Maribor, all classic, long-term hosts of World Cup races in Europe.

The original Club 5 members and Cortina are all classic downhill venues while the other members are technical (giant slalom and slalom) sites. Lake Louise, in Canada’s Banff National Park, is both. Members of Club 5 meet periodically to discuss cross-marketing, information sharing, sponsorship and television rights, and the promotion of ski racing in general.

“The Canadian and Lake Louise voices and influence will be more widely heard and understood from now on as we work to build a stronger future for alpine racing,” said Read.