Meet the World Cup’s Most Dedicated Ski Fans

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Friends and family members travel from near and far to cheer on athletes at World Cup alpine ski races. Every crowd also consists of hundreds of fans without ties to specific athletes who are just there for the sheer love of the sport.

Most have a deeply rooted tie to the sport, and some party harder than others.

The Alpine Ski World Cup Fan Community spearheads the largest cheering section at Beaver Creek and a handful of other World Cups every season. It was founded by Frenchman Lionel Agoutin, who pays out of pocket to travel to select World Cup races and hauls 200 pounds of flags and banners representing every nation competing.

Vail resident Ken Willis, a retired ski instructor, joined Agoutin several years ago. He spends every race frantically handing out flags and jumping around with his own ever-changing fanfare, inciting enthusiasm for every athlete.

“We’re the cheerleaders for everybody,” Willis said, leaping from foot to foot at the Beaver Creek men’s giant slalom with a Brazilian flag bearing the image of Lucas Pinheiro Braathen. “Lionel makes all the banners in Europe and we travel  around with them.”

Willis and Agoutin will also travel to Kitzbühel in January for the Hahnenkamm and to the World Cup Finals in Sun Valley, Idaho, in March. They’ll arrive early, schlepping heavy supplies, and put their marks on the grandstands.

“What’s cool is we develop a relationship with the racers,” Willis said. “They all know us and love what we do. We get them to sign banners and give them out to people.”

Another longtime regular at Beaver Creek, Beat Kotoun, has traveled from Dallas, Texas, to attend the Birds of Prey World Cup races every December for the past 15 years.

Proudly hailing from Bearnaise County, Switzerland, Kotoun brings a variety of Swiss accessories to add to his one-man cheering section, including a massive flag and a collection of enormous cowbells.

“This one sounds wonderful,” Kotoun said from the 2024 Beaver Creek men’s downhill race this month, where he had to use both hands and his entire upper body to clank the Bearnaise-made bell. “I love that it’s so loud. Everyone can hear it.”

Kotoun, whose all-time favorite former racers include fellow Bearnaise natives Beat Feuz and Didier Cuche, was saving his loudest cheers this season for close-to-home compatriots Marco Kohler, Lars Roesti, and Livio Hiltbrand—who all finished this year’s Birds of Prey downhill in the top 30. OK, top 31.

“It’s a great road trip every year,” Kotoun said. “I leave the house in Dallas and my girlfriend decorates for Christmas while I’m gone. I like to hang out after the races and have fun. Once people leave, I go down and have a beer.”

Meanwhile, Back at Killington …

The fans at the Killington World Cup are just as rowdy, cheering on bibs 1 to 64 and waving various country’s flags every year. But the diehard fans in this part of the U.S.—where ski racing runs deep—show up as much to experience a World Cup live and in person as to follow their favorite racers.

Since the Killington World Cup first started in 2016, Mikaela Shiffrin has been the main attraction—because she is both a great ski racer and is “extremely likeable,” says Dan Rubin, who grew up ski racing in the 1970s and ‘80s at nearby Pico Mountain and now coaches the sport on winter weekends.

But Shiffrin isn’t the only show in town. Darb Buchanan—who also grew up ski racing in Vermont in the ‘70s and ‘80s, competed for the University of Vermont’s NCAA Division 1 ski team, then coached Middlebury College’s team for a couple of years—has liked watching the development and now dominance of the U.S. women’s tech team.

He remembers Nina O’Brien making her World Cup debut at Killington in 2016. She finished 48th in the giant slalom and didn’t qualify for a second run. Fast forward to 2024, and O’Brien scored her best World Cup result ever at Killington in sixth, right behind Paula Moltzan (from Buchanan’s alma mater), who made her way back onto the U.S. Ski Team after a standout performance in the Killington slalom in 2018.

This year, 19-year-old Elizabeth Bocock scored her first World Cup points in the Killington GS. Buchanan used to race against one of her uncles and then briefly coached another at Middlebury.

“It’s fun to watch the progress they’ve all made,” he says. “And the U.S. women have become dominant in the tech races.”

A Season-Long Soap Opera

But Rubin and his wife Joan—who “married into this,” she quips—also follow more than just Shiffrin. Both their kids ski raced in Vermont, and when their daughter Sammie became a U16, the Rubins were at races where future World Cup athletes like Ali Nullmeyer (a Canadian who attended a Vermont ski academy) and Tricia Mangan were also on the start list. They now like watching these women compete against the best in the world.

When the World Cup debuted at Killington in 2016, Rubin joined the race crew, slipping the course after each racer.

“I had always wanted to go to a World Cup, and what’s better than going to World Cup is working it and being on the hill,” he says. “I’m standing here, and Shiffrin is going through a gate. It was amazing to watch from just a few feet away.

“And as the first racer was announced, you could hear the cheers rise up the mountain like a wave. Hearing that roar was incredible. You didn’t just hear it, you actually felt it.”

While he no longer works the race, he and Joan still attend and set up a tailgate in the Killington parking lot—one of many.

“It’s a chance for us to see the ski community,” says Joan Rubin. “We’ve had tailgates where it’s people that our kids have raced with, and it’s friends that we’ve had over the years. We’ll get 20 or 30 people to tailgate, not because we’re that social, but because it’s a great way to bring everyone together.”

On other weekends throughout the winter, the Rubins follow the World Cup (both men’s and women’s) on the three streaming services that cover it in the U.S.— Outside+, Peacock, and skiandsnowboard.live.

“It’s our soap opera,” says Rubin, with “good guys and villains.” They like watching the dominance of Marco Odermatt and the fun that Atle Lie McGrath, Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, and Dave Ryding bring to the sport.

As for protagonists, they mention Henrik Kristoffersen. “He tries to look happy and tries to look like he’s cheering on everybody else,” says Dan, “but you know he’s not.”

World Cup Travel

As for traveling farther afield to watch ski racing, as the Alpine Ski World Cup Fan Community does, Darb and his wife Karen plan to attend the 2025 Alpine World Championships in Saalbach, Austria. But the trip is part of a longer European ski vacation with friends.

For the Rubins, Kitzbühel has some allure. But they would like to ski The Streif as much as watch racers hurl themselves down it.

Joan speaks for many ski-racing fans when she says, “I would rather go somewhere to ski than go somewhere to spectate.”