Les Contamines World Cup
I just completed the first World Cup Ski Cross of the season in Les Contamines. The qualifying round was held on Saturday and the race was held on Sunday. It was all supposed to be on Saturday but there was too much snow and fog that caused delays. The qualifying went well. All of the Americans started in the back of the pack. J.J. Johnson started #75, Jake Fiala 77, Cody Smith 83, Errol Kerr 89, and I was 87. It was snowing hard so we didn’t know how the track was going to be after all those competitors but it turned out great. I ended up 2nd, Jake 3rd, Errol 11th, and J.J. was 23rd. Cody finished 39th so he did not qualify for the race (you have to be top 32). So we went into the race on Sunday confident and with good gate picks (the fastest qualifier in his/her heat gets the first pick of the four gates).
Sunday was a blue bird day and a great day to race. I was a little upset at the organizers however. As I looked at the course in inspection, I realized there were about 4 gates that were different. They had been moved sometimes 2 feet and in other spots up to 10 feet. This would not have bothered me very much except that it made the course more difficult and the resets didn’t seem to make any sense. In fact, they moved a gate in the area that caused all of the accidents on the first day and instead of making it more manageable, they made it more difficult. Then after two training runs, they decided to move another gate but only allowed a small number of competitors to continue running to see the gate change. Some of us wanted to see how the course ran after the gate change but they closed the course at an arbitrary time. Errol asked race director “is it okay for us to go look at the gate change?” And the race director said bluntly “no, we just moved the gate up the hill, it didn’t change the line.” Of course it changed the line considerably and they didn’t allow us to inspect the change. Oh well. We decided to roll with the punches since this was our first race here.
For me, the first three heats (the round of 32, the quarters, and the semis) were a breeze. I had a great start so I got out front and I was uncontested each of the three heats. Then the final came along. It was a talent-packed final with Thomas Krauss to my right, Ted Piccard to my left, and Stanley Hayer to the far right. I had the best gate pick because of my fast qualifying time and my start was going well so I thought I had a great chance to win. Unfortunately, Thomas got a jump on me in the start. Because he was in front by a couple of inches he was able to veer me a little off to the right. This messed me up off the first roller and then Stanley tried to capitalize on my fight with Krauss but he was unsuccessful. I tried to pinch Stanley off at the second turn, but he wasn’t having any of that. He pushed his way into the line and consequently pushed me off the line. I was then lined up on the next jump on the left side. I wasn’t happy about this because this was the jump where all the crashes happened on the first day. I made the jump less problematic throughout the day because I took a line on the right side. But since Stanley pushed me off to the left, it was a very treacherous take off. I pressed as hard as I could and just snuck in behind Krauss. From there I had about three chances to pass Krauss but I didn’t capitalize on the opportunities. He was clearly going slower and I had his draft to work with but I chickened out on a couple of spots. Remember if a pass goes wrong, you can easily get passed from behind so there is a lot to be taken into account out on the course. For a guy that doesn’t do a lot of multi-tasking, it’s a difficult task to run through so many scenarios and split second decisions. Anyway, I finished right behind Krauss and pulled in a 2nd place in my first World Cup appearance.
I was happy with the result, but I wasn’t happy with the fact that I had drug testing. I used to do tons of drug testing when I was racing Alpine but it was nice racing the last four years without guys watching me pee in a cup. Oh well, those are the realities of sport today.