Briefs | Olympics: Slowdown hits Whistler resort before Games

Olympics

Business drops at B.C. venue: Despite being about a year from hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics, British Columbia's Whistler is experiencing the same drop in business that has hurt ski resorts elsewhere.

Part of it was a relative lack of snow, but officials and businesses in Whistler are also pointing to the global economic downturn. Most cities experience a boom ahead of the Olympics, but Whistler is showing it isn't immune to the global recession.

Spending is down by about 10 percent for the season compared to a year ago, Tourism Whistler's Casey Vanden Heuvel said. He added that the resort had prepared for a slowdown.

"It's fairly predictable that in tight economic times, discretionary spending is a form of spending people cut," he said. "In terms of impact, we see that our average length of stay has been reduced."

Vanden Heuvel also said overnight stays and conference bookings have declined.

Intrawest, the company that owns the ski resort, announced job cuts in November. It also owns other resorts in North America and said the drop in business at its resorts is unlike anything it has experienced in recent years. The company refinanced a loan of more than $1 billion with its parent company in October, hours before a deadline that could have seen Intrawest's assets sold off.

Jim Douglas, manager of the Pan Pacific Whistler hotel, concurs that business is off by about 10 percent.

"A big core concentration of our business is U.S. business," he said.

Conde Nast Traveller magazine recently picked Whistler as the best ski town in North America, but the resort received negative attention last week when a gondola tower collapsed. Fifty-three people were trapped in unheated gondola cabins for several hours, and 12 were injured. The Excalibur Gondola has yet to fully reopen.

Norwegian is stripped of equestrian bronze medal: Norwegian rider Tony Andre Hansen was stripped of his Olympic bronze medal in team jumping after his horse, Camiro, tested positive for capsaicin — a banned pain-relieving medication derived from chili peppers — at the Beijing Games.

Hansen, 29, was disqualified by the International Equestrian Federation (FEI) and banned from the sport for 4 ½ months.

Without Hansen's scores, Norway teammates drop out of medal contention and Switzerland moves from fourth place to the bronze-medal spot. The United States won gold in Hong Kong, where the equestrian events were staged, and Canada was second.

Skiing

Kostelic wins World Cup men's slalom event: Croatia's Ivica Kostelic won a World Cup men's slalom in Alta Badia, Italy. The top American finisher was Ted Ligety of Park City, Utah, in 12th place.

Kostelic won in a combined time of 1 minute, 39.83 seconds. France's Jean-Baptiste Grange finished second, 0.20 seconds behind, and Olympic slalom champion Benjamin Raich of Austria was third.

Golf

Scientist examines the game: Neil Wolkodoff, director of the Rose Center for Health and Sports Sciences in Denver, examined various golf issues.

Among the top findings: Given the number of calories burned, it is OK to call golf a sport.

"One of the more interesting things I found was that the actual act of swinging a golf club takes significant energy," Wolkodoff said.

Wolkodoff found eight male volunteers, ages 26 to 61 with handicaps between 2 and 17, strapped them into some state-of-the-art equipment and took them out for a few rounds of golf on the hilly front nine of Inverness Golf Club in suburban Denver.

Wolkodoff discovered the subjects burned more calories when they walked and carried their clubs (721) than when they rode in a cart (411). When they walked, they traversed about 2.5 miles, compared to 0.5 miles when they rode, but the 500 percent increase in mileage corresponded to merely a 75 percent increase in calories burned.

Auto racing

Davis sells NASCAR team, engine company: A month removed from his first NASCAR championship, but hampered by the economic crisis, owner Bill Davis has sold his race team and engine company.

Mike Held, a California businessman, and Marty Gaunt, vice president at Bill Davis Racing, bought out the veteran owner. Davis, who has been involved in NASCAR for more than 20 years, won his first championship this season with driver Johnny Benson in the Craftsman Truck Series.

Sailing

Telefonica Blue closes gap: Spain's Telefonica Blue won the third leg of the Volvo Ocean Race, closing the gap on overall leader Ericsson 4 of Sweden during the 1,950 nautical miles from Kochi, India, to Singapore.

The event is to end in June in St. Petersburg, Russia, after 10 legs and six in-port regattas.

Awards

Phelps adds to honors: American swimmer Michael Phelps picked up two more awards when The Associated Press named him male athlete of the year and selected his eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics as the top sports story of the year.

Seattle Times news services