The O. Zone: Bold Colorado sports predictions for remainder of 2024

Editor’s note 1: One of these predictions already came true, albeit on the high side. Vail was reporting 8 new at 6 this morning and it’s still snowing hard at 9:30 a.m., Tuesday, meaning we have to have surpassed 10 inches and be on the way to a foot of fresh. That should allow crews to get a helluva lot more of Vail’s front side open this week.

Because Real Vail readers demanded it – and my election endorsements, in Colorado at least, proved so spot-on — I’m going to go ahead and make some bold sports predictions for what’s left of 2024:

• Mikaela Shiffrin will roll back into her home Vail Valley in mid-December with 100 career World Cup ski racing wins to her credit (she nailed No. 98 Saturday in a slalom in Levi, Finland, earning a record eighth reindeer).
• Shiffrin will then race in the super-G on Sunday, Dec. 15 in the Stifel Birds of World Cup at Beaver Creek, where she last raced (and won gold in the slalom) at the 2015 Alpine World Ski Championships.
• Later that day, the Denver Broncos will win their fourth straight game, taking down the Indianapolis Colts to improve their record to 9-5 and all but lock up their first playoff appearance since Denver won its third Super Bowl in 2016.
• Also, it will snow again by then. Several more times. But hopefully not on race days the way it bigly did last season, unfortunately cancelling all the annual men’s races. By adding the women for the first time ever in regular-season races, we’ve doubled our chances of actually pulling off the races (the men hit the hill Dec. 6-8).
• Both the Avs and the Nuggets will get their collective acts together by the start of the new year and make deep playoff runs into the late spring and early summer.
• Finally, the Colorado Buffaloes (not the defending and 20-time NCAA champion ski-team Buffs but the Coach Prime-led football Buffs) will have won the Big 12 title on Dec. 7 and be headed to the new, 12-team College Football Playoff that starts Dec. 20. Plus, future Bronco Travis Hunter will be well on his way to the Heisman Trophy.

That last prediction is the one I’m least certain about, but don’t tell Deion. I don’t want to land on his media shit list. The Real Vail crew went to the game on Saturday and absolutely loved the hype and hysteria in a stadium not really built for those kinds of numbers (fourth largest crowd in school history) as the Buffs stampeded the Utes 49-24 and Leslie Jones danced with Chip.

I’m a little worried about Kansas on Saturday in Lawrence because, even though it’s a basketball school, the Jayhawks are 3-1 in their last four football games, including knocking off formerly unbeaten BYU in Provo – CU’s likely foe in the Big 12 championship game in Arlington, Texas, Dec. 7.

First thing’s first, the Buffs need to beat KU in football (good luck in basketball) and then handle Oklahoma State in the regular-season finale in Boulder on Nov. 20. Both of those games are imminently winnable.

My other predictions I’m a little more solid on. Shiffrin, an Edwards resident who was born in Vail, has five chances to get to 100 wins by the Beaver Creek super-G on Dec. 15: A slalom in Gurgl, Austria, on Nov. 23; a giant slalom Nov. 30 and a slalom Dec. 1 on her home-away-from-home hill (she went to nearby Burke Mountain Academy) at Killington, Vermont; and a pair of GS races at Tremblant, Canada, Dec. 7-8.

Now Shiffrin’s GS may not be quite up to her slalom standard at this point, but it will come around. In the World Cup opener in Soelden, Austria, on Oct. 26, Shiffrin was leading a GS after the first run but wound up off the podium in fifth after losing a ton of time her second run:

“Amazing way to start the slalom season, I’m super happy,” Shiffrin told the Associated Press after Saturday’s slalom win. The AP story noted she led the season-opening giant slalom in Austria three weeks ago but squandered that advantage in the second run. “From this weekend, I am racing every single weekend until world championships (in Saalbach, Austria, in February), for sure. So it’s going be a really big push now, and I was a little bit off on my mentality in Soelden, so hopefully I can bring the GS under control. But it was very important to start with a good place in slalom.”

Word on the ski-racing street was Shiffrin was looking to the race the super-G in Beaver Creek, even though at the beginning of the season she said she wouldn’t be doing the other speed event of downhill. But by saying she’s racing every weekend until worlds, that means she’ll race the Beaver Creek World Cup, which features a downhill on Saturday, Dec. 14, and super-G Sunday, Dec. 15.

Bonus prediction: Former Vail resident Lindsey Vonn, who for a while held the women’s all-time record with 82 World Cup wins, mostly in downhill and super-G, will forerun the women’s downhill on Dec. 14 after coming out of retirement at age 40 and fully recovering from knee surgery. Vonn won a super-G bronze in Beaver Creek at those 2015 worlds.

As for it snowing by then, you can take that one to Vegas (not sure if they allow weather bets). It’s supposed to start tonight, then be dry for a few days, then dump next holiday week ahead of Beaver Creek’s opening to the public on Wednesday, Nov. 27, aka Turkey Day Eve.

“Monday will be dry for most of the day, then a storm will bring 2-6+ inches of snow from Monday night through Tuesday,” Opensnow.com meteorologist Joel Gratz wrote Monday morning. “The latest models increased snow totals for this storm, so Tuesday could be a low-to-mid-end powder day. After that, Wednesday through Saturday will be dry, and then a stormy pattern will likely bring multiple days of snow to Colorado during Thanksgiving week.”

There are currently 10 ski areas up and running for the season in Colorado, including Vail (Real Vail hit a very fun opening day there Friday). Several more ski areas join the fray this week, with Powderhorn opening Friday and Aspen Mountain and Snowmass opening for the season Saturday, five days ahead of their originally scheduled opening. Steamboat also opens Saturday.

Conditions at Vail are ahead of the curve, with skiing out of both villages and Chairs 2 and 4 up and running. Look for more frontside runs and lifts to start opening this coming week, especially with new snow in the forecast. Quick reminder: Prices went up again Sunday, but you can still get an Epic Pass for the coming season up until the Dec. 2 deadline.

Editor’s note 2: The O. Zone is a recurring opinion column by RealVail.com publisher David O. Williams. Please read how you can help support this site by considering a donation or signing up for news alerts … or both.

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David O. Williams

Managing Editor at RealVail

David O. Williams is the editor and co-founder of RealVail.com and has had his awarding-winning work (see About Us) published in more than 75 newspapers and magazines around the world, including 5280 Magazine, American Way Magazine (American Airlines), the Anchorage Daily News (Alaska), the Anchorage Daily Press (Alaska), Aspen Daily News, Aspen Journalism, the Aspen Times, Beaver Creek Magazine, the Boulder Daily Camera, the Casper Star Tribune (Wyoming), the Chicago Tribune, Colorado Central Magazine, the Colorado Independent (formerly Colorado Confidential), Colorado Newsline, Colorado Politics (formerly the Colorado Statesman), Colorado Public News, the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Colorado Springs Independent, the Colorado Statesman (now Colorado Politics), the Colorado Times Recorder, the Cortez Journal, the Craig Daily Press, the Curry Coastal Pilot (Oregon), the Daily Trail (Vail), the Del Norte Triplicate (California), the Denver Daily News, the Denver Gazette, the Denver Post, the Durango Herald, the Eagle Valley Enterprise, the Eastside Journal (Bellevue, Washington), ESPN.com, Explore Big Sky (Mont.), the Fort Morgan Times (Colorado), the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, the Greeley Tribune, the Huffington Post, the King County Journal (Seattle, Washington), the Kingman Daily Miner (Arizona), KUNC.org (northern Colorado), LA Weekly, the Las Vegas Sun, the Leadville Herald-Democrat, the London Daily Mirror, the Moab Times Independent (Utah), the Montgomery Journal (Maryland), the Montrose Daily Press, The New York Times, the Parent’s Handbook, Peaks Magazine (now Epic Life), People Magazine, Powder Magazine, the Pueblo Chieftain, PT Magazine, the Rio Blanco Herald Times (Colorado), Rocky Mountain Golf Magazine, the Rocky Mountain News, RouteFifty.com (formerly Government Executive State and Local), the Salt Lake Tribune, SKI Magazine, Ski Area Management, SKIING Magazine, the Sky-Hi News, the Steamboat Pilot & Today, the Sterling Journal Advocate (Colorado), the Summit Daily News, United Hemispheres (United Airlines), Vail/Beaver Creek Magazine, Vail en Español, Vail Health Magazine, Vail Valley Magazine, the Vail Daily, the Vail Trail, Westword (Denver), Writers on the Range and the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. Williams is also the founder, publisher and editor of RealVail.com and RockyMountainPost.com.

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