Colorado & Winter Sports: Ten Things You Didn't Know

Colorado is home to over twenty-five skiing and snowboarding destinations. Here are ten other facts you may not have known about Colorado’s winter sport history and culture.

1) Colorado has never hosted the Olympic Games. In 1972, Colorado voters rejected the award to host the 1976 Games because of the cost, both financial and environmental. Denver remains the only city to have taken this action after winning the bid.

2) The U.S. Ski and Snowboard team trains in Colorado at Copper Mountain, one of five official U.S. training sites.

3) In 2018, Colorado athletes took home 1/3 of the U.S. winter Olympic medals at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games in South Korea.

4) Vail and Beaver Creek (two Colorado ski resorts) have hosted the FIS World Ski Championships three times (1989, 1999, and 2015). Each year in December, Beaver Creek hosts a World Cup downhill ski race event called Birds of Prey. (It’s free for public spectators!) Aspen, Colorado has hosted the Winter X Games (X for eXtreme sports) since 2002.

5) Silverton Mountain, a ski resort in southwest Colorado, gets over 400 inches of snow a year. The resort only has one chair lift. But, you can helicopter to your other runs!

6) Colorado Springs is the national headquarters for U.S. Figure Skating and home to the World Figure Skating Museum and Hall of Fame and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Centers, which train figure skaters, along with athletes in these sports: boxing, cycling, gymnastics judo, pentathlon, shooting, swimming and wrestling. In non-pandemic times, the center is open for public tours.

7) A 2015 study found that the ski/snowboard economy in Colorado supports over 46,000 year-round jobs and has a 4.8 billion dollar economic impact.

8) Boulder Freeride, CU Boulder’s largest student club, was founded in 1933, and also boasts to be the largest collegiate ski and snowboard club in the world.

9) Eldora, Boulder County’s only ski resort, offers nordic skiing and snowshoeing trails, and the Boulder Nordic Club grooms a path at North Boulder Park each time there is adequate snowfall (from mid-October to April 1).

10) Colorado is also home to numerous sledding and snowtubing hills! (Most tubing hills include tube rentals.) In Boulder, check out Tantra Park and Scott Carpenter Park (but don’t forget to bring your own sled or tube).