YOUR AD HERE »

Now that’s the World Cup spirit

Dear Aspen:

Scott Condon’s “Aspen hits its stride with the World Cup race” editorial (Nov. 29) is spot on.

I encourage everyone to see some of Aspen’s “World Cup Soul” still on display in selected store windows as part of the third annual Aspen Winternational Window Display Contest.



Since the launch of the initial contest in 2008, some of Aspen’s retailers in the core have gone to great lengths to communicate their World Cup window inspirations, including Pitkin County Dry Goods’ infamous “Gold Glitter Skis,” Stephan Kaelin’s enthusiastic live window models, Ute Mountaineer and Pomeroy Sports’ vintage World Cup memorabilia and Gorsuch’s display of the actual World Cup trophy, on loan from the Colorado Ski Museum (and still on display at the Gondola Plaza store this year).

As a new element to this year’s contest, kids from our local schools teamed up with some businesses as “guest visual artists” and used the store windows to display their World Cup inspirations through art.




As you may have guessed, the judges selected the school kids’ designs for the top three podium spots!

Taking the Gold was Paula Ponto’s Aspen Country Day sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade Painting Class for Performance Ski Shop with an amazing piece in the style of Roy Lichtenstein (three Aspen patrons have already inquired about purchasing the piece!). The Silver went to Aspen High’s Conner Boyd and her gang of IB Honors Art students for Pomeroy Sports with 3-D caricatures of past World Cup winners. The Bronze went to 40 of Rae Lampe’s Aspen Middle School Art students who designed eight different World Cup action paintings for American National Bank. Honorable mention goes to the AVSC Kids’ display of vintage posters and personal well wishes to racers at Radio Sports. These windows will be on display through Friday.

Everyone in Aspen should be proud of how our homegrown kids showed great spirit and put forth wonderful efforts to make this year’s contest another great success. Thanks to all involved and especially to The Aspen Times (our contest sponsor). We hope more students and area businesses will join us for next year’s competition.

In closing, Europeans view World Cup as sport at the highest level. The World Cup is Aspen’s NFL team … a home game that lives on a world stage. Seeing these kids embrace this project with such enthusiasm has made it clear to me that one of Aspen’s biggest and best events sits right under our noses. Let’s all take a page from our kids’ playbook and embrace the overall event as our calling card to skiers and riders throughout the world.

Tom Kilby

2010 Visa Aspen Winternational head, “Community Spirit” Committee