An ice cross downhill competition is coming to Fenway Park, as the Boston Red Sox will welcome the Red Bull Crashed Ice event next month.
Non-baseball offerings have been fairly common at Fenway Park over the years, as Major League Baseball’s oldest ballpark has been used for events such as concerts and college football games. In one of the more unique events in its history, the ballpark will host an ice cross downhill competition from February 8-9, when the Red Bull Crashed Ice event is staged.
The ice cross downhill tournament will be a fairly large in scope, and the use of Fenway Park should provide a strong showcase for the event’s competitors. It also requires a good deal of preparation to Fenway Park, where work is already underway to configure the ballpark for the event. More from the Boston Herald:
The three Crashed Ice events are the biggest events on the ATXS (All Terrain Skate Cross Federation) Ice Cross Downhill World Championship schedule. The first was held last month in Yokohama, Japan, and will be followed by one in Finland on Feb. 2 before the Fenway event Feb. 8-9.
It will be the first time a major ice cross downhill tournament has been held in the United States outside of Minnesota.
“I’m from Minnesota so I was a little bummed at first when I heard it wasn’t coming back, but to be inside such an iconic venue like Fenway and have it inside a stadium, that’s going to be a huge improvement and huge gain for Red Bull Crashed Ice to showcase that they can hold it in a stadium,” said Amanda Trunzo, the top-ranked woman in the world. “The fans are going to be incredible there and it’s going to be great to look down into the stadium and see tons of fans.”…
Field preparations at Fenway Park began on Dec. 26 and scaffolding construction got started this past week. The nearly 2,000-foot course will drop 70 feet from the starting line over the bleachers in right-center field, touching all the bases before reaching the finish line at home plate.
As noted, Fenway Park receives plenty of use outside of baseball, and this will mark the latest non-baseball event to have taken place at the ballpark since the Red Sox’s 2018 season ended. In November, it played host to a college football game between Harvard and Yale.