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New U.S. Ski & Snowboard Director Of Communications Tom Webb Ready For The 2018-19 Season

US Ski & Snowboard

After 30 years with U.S. Ski and Snowboard Tom Kelly has retired, KPCW spoke with Kelly’s replacement Director of Marketing and Communications at U.S. Ski and Snowboard. Tom Webb.

Tom Webb comes to U.S. Ski having previously worked in media and sports.

“Originally from the U.K. I moved here to American in 2014.” Webb continued, “Met the girl of my dreams down in Austin, Texas where I was working for a Formula 1 Grand Prix Venue, having spent many years on the road working in international motor-racing. We got married in Texas a couple of years ago. Spent a year in Bermuda working on the America’s Cup, the big sailing event down there. Then was offered the opportunity to come here to Park City to come and fill those mighty shoes. So, moved here exactly a year ago and then started trying to learn as much as I can about the wild and wonderful world of U.S. Ski and Snowboard and try and take in some of that experience and knowledge from Mr. Kelly and deploy that here.”

Webb says he learned to ski as a boy in England but learned plenty about snow sports in the past year.

“Britain obviously with a severe lack of mountains and not as much snow as we get here in Utah doesn’t have the richest heritage in ski or snowboard.” Webb explained, “I went to a school in southeast England where we did actually do some skiing. I learned how to ski on a dry ski slope and then we would occasionally head over to Europe to go and test out our ski skills there. So, I’ve always been a recreational skier. Over the last year obviously I’ve learned an enormous amount about the wide variety of sports that we have from ski jumping through to alpine and cross country, snowboard and free ski and freestyle and everything else that we do. But yeah somebody once asked me, while I worked in Formula 1 they said, ‘are you any good at driving cars?’ I said no I leave that to the experts, what I do is hopefully tell the stories about the people who drive the cars. I think that’s what I’m bringing to the job here.”

Webb will have a big event to cover as the 2019 FIS world championships will be held here in Park City.

“October the 25th marks 100 days until the start of the 2019 FIS snowboard freestyle and free ski world championships." Webb said, "We’ve got over 1,300 athletes coming into Park City and to Solitude to come here and compete for World Championship titles. It’s a huge event, arguably the biggest snow sports event in Utah since the 2002 Olympic games. So, a really really big and significant number of sports events taking place here. We’ve obviously got some very strong medal prospects across the board in all of those disciplines that will be competing here in February from the 1st to the 10th of 2019. In particular, people like Chloe Kim whose gold medal in PyeongChang elevated her to that global icon status. Chloe, Red Gerard, Jamie Anderson, David Wise, local boy Joss Christensen. There’s a whole bunch of athletes that are going to be for world championships titles in their home soil. The eyes of the world will be on what takes place here. The last world championships that took place in Sierra Nevada, Spain enjoyed TV audiences over 230 million people. Which actually makes it bigger than a Super Bowl, I should probably whisper that. We’re aiming to exceed those numbers of people tuning in around the world to watch the incredible action here.”

KPCW reporter David Boyle covers all things in the Heber Valley as well as sports and breaking news.
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