Considering that he'll be rolling out of his own bed to get to the starting gate, that he'll know most of the spectators by their first name, that the U.S. Ski Team headquarters are at the bottom of the hill, and that he'll be skiing on a run he literally grew up on, you could say Jeremy Nobis has a home-course advantage this weekend as the World Cup opens at the Park City Ski Area - and still be guilty of an understatement.
They don't come much more homegrown than Jeremy Nobis. It's true, he didn't spend the first six years of his life in Park City. He was born in Madison, Wisconsin. But he came with his parents to Utah's mountains when he was seven. And when he beat all the other second-graders at Park City's Marsac Elementary School in a race at ParkWest at the end of the season, he was a confirmed ski racer. Adopted or not.By the time he was eight he was training with the Park City Ski Team on the U.S. Ski Team runs. He learned to race on the Ladies G.S. run, which has since had its name changed to Willy's Run, and which is where the slalom and giant slalom World Cup races will be held this weekend.
"I know that hill like the back of my hand," says Nobis. He says it matter-of-factly, not bragging. The fact is, he does know that hill better than most things in his life.
"I remember how frightening it was when I was a kid," he says. "It's steep. It's the kind of hill you have to get psyched before you go down and then you have to give it your all."
Just a a year ago, Nobis found himself on Willy's Run, competing in an FIS-sanctioned race in conjunction with the Utah Winter Games. The other contestants didn't have a chance. He won by almost four seconds, a relative eternity. If it had been a football game, the opposing coach would have cried about pouring it on.
Fellow FIS skiers wondered just how good this then-20-year-old Park City skier would be if he were racing against the Tombas and the Girardellis and the Furuseths on the World Cup.
The very next week, they got their answer. Rushed to Europe because of a rash of injuries and poor performances by the U.S. men, Nobis competed in a giant slalom in Adelboden, Switzerland. He finished seventh in the first World Cup race of his life. It was the U.S.'s best giant slalom finish in two years.
An ankle injury at the World Championships slowed him much of the rest of the season, but in the year's final World Cup giant slalom, at Waterville Valley, N.H., Nobis placed 13th, giving him another points-scoring race in the biggest skiing league there is.
As fate would have it, his first full World Cup season now begins where he began.
"There are all the obvious advantages for me to race here in Park City," said Nobis on Thursday, as he took a break in preparation for the weekend races. "I've got a whole town completely behind me. The only disadvantage is all the pressure."
And not just the pressure of racing at home, but the pressure that comes from posing as America's brightest skiing hope at the start of an Olympic year. From all indications, if the U.S. is to have an heir to the Mahres in Albertville, Jeremy Nobis is the man.
"I know a lot of people are wondering how I'll do, if last year was for real," says Nobis. "But when it comes to racing fast I have no doubt in my mind that I can be successful. All the development and training, it's paying off."
Nobis's early training not only included going through the ranks of the Park City Ski Team and Intermountain junior racing, it also included spending his last two years of high school at the Green Mountain Valley Ski Academy in Vermont. After graduation, as a member of the U.S. Ski Team, he won two world junior championships, in giant slalom and super G.S in 1988 and 1989.
His rise through the ranks of world class skiing has been both rapid and consistent.
And all of it duly noted by his home town, a home town that is doing its best this week to give Jeremy Nobis as much help as possible in his pursuit to be the best skier in the world.
Not only did Park City manage to get the World Cup opener in his home town, and on his favorite run, but they somehow managed to have the course covered with genuine Utah-quality snow - Jeremy's favorite.
Everything, it would seem, is in place. As the editorial in this week's Park City Record said: "The kid with the red hair and freckles, that played soccer here with the other boys, is now one of the top ski racers in the world. In the world. And this week, when he gets in the gate at the top of Willy's Run, he'll be the only racer on his home turf . . . "So tear 'em up, Jeremy. You know the mountain. You know the town. We just wanted to let you know we're pulling for you."