Slalom 2 in France

The last day of races in France went well for my USA teammate Allison Jones as she took silver as did my Winter Park teammate Adam Hall from New Zealand- I’m happy for both of them! After the races they race organizers had this HUGE pie/ tarte brought up to the village- just for us. It took a while but it was really cool and quite tasty too!

The next 2 days were full of crazy traveling to get home. We drove from France to Monaco to Italy to Austria to Germany and got on a plane to the states. I think we ended up traveling for something like 48 hours by the time I arrived at my parent’s house on Sunday evening. I had good trip but relieved that it’s over.

Slalom in France

Despite my unfortunate luck with SL points, I am happy to report that my Winter Park teammate and traveling partner from New Zealand, Adam Hall won his first World Cup race today! This was his first World Cup podium and first win- way to go! And a US teammate, Allison Jones took the bronze, nice job! Hope more good luck for my friends tomorrow.

End of the road

I got news last night that I will not be racing the Slalom races here in Queyras.

The reason that was given to me is that I do not have the appropriate points. Unfortunately, there is no way that I could have known this because they are basing this decision on a points list that I can't find because it isn't posted. I am very sad and disappointed. I try to know the rules and know where I stand so that I don’t end up in this position. It is what it is, and I’ll be heading home in a few days.

French GS #2

We got about a foot of snow overnight and the race hill was super soft, and warm up was powder skiing but I skied better today! Still not super fast but I improved on my times yesterday so that was good. First run I had a better focus and fixed some of the things I needed to fix. Second run wasn’t as good. I was still a lot closer than I’ve been but I nearly missed a gate on the top, so I got late, ran a little too straight the rest of the run to try to make up for it and just seemed to fight my way down. I almost scored my first World Cup points of the year, but second run cost me too much time. Bummer. I ended up 12th.

Tomorrow is a day off and they are having a party for all the athletes tonight. The Euro's sure do know how to make World Cup fun :)
Then we have 2 more days of racing SLALOM- YEAH!

French GS #1

Well...
I’d love to say that I had a fantastic day and I skied super fast but…
I just didn’t. The snow was soft but surprisingly the hill was in really good shape and the snow actually held up quite well. The courses were fun but the race hill is not steep enough to be forgiving at all.

First run I was able to hold my tuck most of the run to help keep my speed up but then made costly mistakes in the wrong places and ended up with a really slow time. Second run I got late, my line got lower and lower until I had to make a big move to fix it and that isn’t fast. Bottom line, I was slow today, and placed 10th.

The good thing is that I think I know where I can improve for tomorrow’s GS.

Queyras, France

There is a joke among ski racers that if you want it to snow hold a ski race. Well this has happened here in France. Until yesterday morning the hill here had very little snow and it was mostly man-made. They had just cancelled the speed races that were scheduled because the hill didn’t have enough snow to hold the races. Now, they’ve gotten about two feet of snow in the past 24 hours. This is not so good for racing either.

I was very excited to come here and race some tech events on firm snow as I had a lot more confidence after racing in Abtenau. Now I’m not quite so optimistic. It’s always good for the mountains to receive snow but soft snow and flat hills are very unforgiving. For me unforgiving is bad. My feet and legs are not always as smooth and clean as I’d like and even little mistakes add up quickly in these types of conditions. I guess we’ll see how it goes.

I’m might do some powder skiing today but maybe I’ll just take the day off as we’re racing GS tomorrow.

SC # 3

The hill we’ve been racing on does not get any sun and they had not groomed so the track was slicker than it had been. When you run a course multiple days (without grooming) the track tends to get harder, slicker, and faster as you go. Although we weren’t running the same course, it was still very similar and this is exactly what happened to the track. I knew that it was going to be tough and I’d have to be ahead of it to have a decent run. Regrettably, that didn’t happen. On the first pitch I got behind and it stacked up on me so a few gates later I had to put on the brakes to try to make a gate but couldn’t do it and slid right by with speed. When I finally did stop I was too far down hill to make the gate. My day was over. I was bummed, but there were several others that ended up crashing or in the fence from similar mistakes, so I felt fortunate to have such a benign mistake.

On to France for some tech races!