About the Course

Travis Ganong, Olympian and Palisades Tahoe athlete has skied all around the globe bringing home wins on the Audi FIS Ski World Cup circuit. Follow along as he takes us through a morning of training on the renowned Red Dog course:

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Red Dog is a spectacular race course. It has four primary sections: No Name Face, Dog Leg, Coaches Corner and Red Dog Face. The Giant Slalom course covers all four sections. From the starting gate, athletes gain speed across No Name Face. Athletes then drop into Dog Leg where each turn gets steeper. Then, the course goes from relatively flat to extremely steep. It’s quite challenging for athletes to create a rhythm due to the technical terrain.

After the upper portion of the Dog Leg, there’s a false flat at the top of Far East Express. From here, athletes are forced to tackle a big change in direction at Coaches Corner. The course bends to the left and through a saddle before entering Red Dog Face, the start of the Slalom course. At this point, athletes will be able to see straight to the end of the course. They’ll start to hear cheering from fans, as the race hill begins to fall away to the right where athletes are forced to make strong right footers.

Finally, they reach the heart of The Face that becomes challenging with a test of balance over multiple terrain variations as they battle a real roller coaster course to the finish. Watching these athletes will make for some great spectating.

The course, raced in 2017 for the women’s alpine event, is one Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin has described as “one of, if not the toughest” course venues on the women’s World Cup circuit.