Less than a year before a B.C. Mountain will host Olympic snowboarding and freestyle ski events, a well-respected international sports magazine is slamming the way the facility handled World Cup events.

In a scathing Feb. 23 Sports Illustrated story, West Vancouver's Cypress Mountain is criticized by athletes and coaches who visited during the events earlier this month. Some didn't like the courses, and others said they felt unwelcome.

"It's a crappy venue, and the people aren't nice," said Canadian snowboard coach Jesse Fulton said. "We come here to where the Olympics are supposed to be, and it's like a burden for them. So many things that could be easy are made difficult."

The athletes also took issue with what they felt was an inconvenient location of the private athlete's lounge.

"The boarders were forced to park too far from the venue," the article said. "Their practice and race-day routines were scrambled for no stated reason; their paths often blocked by overzealous security guards, apparently on loan, one rider joked, from a nearby mall, site of the event's lame, lightly attended medal ceremonies."

Cypress Mountain's Kent Rideout admits there have been difficulties in this busy World Cup season.

"Another one of the challenges was trying to run a resort of this popularity and honouring your passholders and regular customers at the same time trying to run six World Cups," he said. "That was a real juggling and balancing act."

As the popularity of these sports grows, it seems so too have the egos and attitudes of some of the competitors. Privately, some commentators suggest the athletes who now expect rock star treatment have become a little too big for their boards.

The story called the last minute cancellation of the parallel giant slalom event "an embarrassment."

"We changed over from snowboard cross and groomed it all out we didn't get the conditions in terms of the weather to freeze the track up," Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee's Tim Gayda told CTV News on Feb. 15.

Canadian snowboard team member Alexa Loo said her team was devastated by the news.

"It's unacceptable that the snow was like this and then it got cancelled," she said at the time.

But Cypress says they're happy most events were able to take place, even if they lost one.

"We got five out of the six events off," said Rideout. "I think we did a good job. Did we learn a few things? Yes, and that was part of the whole process in getting ready for 2010."

The mountain will be closed to regular passholders during the 2010 Games.

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Mike Killeen