Hope Everyone is doing well!!!

I have been busy busy as a bee! I flew to Mt Hood, Oregon for the day to do a photo shoot for Nike. It was a lot of fun and there were lots of nice people there to make me look fabulous!! They will be posting some video and stuff on nike.com so I will let you know when that goes up!!!

So speaking of Mt Hood, my teammates are having a fund raiser soon so if anyone is in the Mt Hood area or wants to have a lot of fun with lots of ski team athletes you should definitely check it out! this is what is going down!!! I hear the athletes are going to be Erik Schlopy, Steven Nyman, Scott Macartney, Tim Jitloff, Leanne Smith, Laurenne Ross, and Keely Kelleher.

Clinics- Saturday, July 18-Sunday, July 19 at Palmer Glacier/Timberline/Mt. Hood - Tentative Schedule:

6:15-7:15AM: Registration, Check-in, Breakfast, Athlete Meet & Greet

8:00AM: Meet on top of Palmer at our designated lane to break up into groups

11:00-11:30AM: Break for Lunch

- Autograph session on Saturday (after lunch, for one hour)

- Breakfast and lunch provided on both days

Dinner/Auction- Saturday, July 18 at the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland

- Address: 1849 SW Salmon St, Portland, OR 97207

- Doors open at 5:00PM, Silent Auction/Cocktails until 7:15PM, Dinner at 7:30PM

- Wine/beer and dinner provided

- Attire: Black Tie and Blue Jeans

Also for all the details go the website. http://www.worldcupdreams.org/

I gotta run for now!!! literally! I’m starting to ramp up the training and getting to my 8 hour days!!! The hardest part is eating enough… but don’t worry I am still having fun! Tonight is an Eddie Vedder concert! Stephan and Kaz are coming over to eat my delicious chicken Tikka Masala! yummy! then we are going to rock!

Aloha!

Jules

Winter’s long gone now… for a while there, even into mid April, I was still totally in winter mode - skiing at Nationals, testing skis, and doing a celebrity ski event. But now that I had 10 days or so on Maui, some physical fitness tests in Park City Utah at the brand new US Ski Team training facility (which is just extremely state of the art!) and am now in California for a photo shoot and some hangtime with friends and family, I’m just all over the summer vibe.

Gone is the cold, the snow, the white capped mountains… on comes the bikini, the spaghetti straps, the slippers. And of course, no summer would be complete without some good sweaty workouts and strenuous physical activity.

The photos were taken of my sister and I in the climbing gym.

See you guys later on… have fun out there, and be safe!

Jules

I am back in Europe and the main event was the Verbier High Five. Its a fun series of five different events, GS, skiercross, speed trap, Carlsberg triathlon, and parallel slalom. You can check out the details http://www.verbierhighfivebycarlsberg.com/high-five/en/home. I was 2nd!! Won some new long johns. The weather was beautiful, and its always nice to have some fun friendly competition after a long season.

Right now I am in Saas Fee testing skis. They are being incredibly awesome. We get on the lift at 6 am and whip tons of runs off by snowmobile, then done by 10. I had a day of GS, and a day of Super G. Tomorrow I am going to try out my new DH skis. Things are good! Hope everyone is enjoying their spring.
I also want to touch on the passing of my friend and ski Legend Shane McConkey. His memorial was this past Sunday and I wish I was able to make it home. I will just share my personal story of how Shane has inspired me.

Growing up in Squaw Valley you get to know your “ski family” pretty fast. Its a small place, full of lots of big personalities. Though I was much younger than Shane, and didn’t get the chance to really meet him until I caught up in age, he was a huge influence on all the kids I looked up. There is something about Squaw Valley, that really inspires everyone there to just love skiing. I along with Marco Sullivan took the path of ski racing, but yet many other of my friends took the path of being kick ass free skiers. We all started in the same place, doing non-stop Kt runs, skiing the fingers, and looking up to crazy guys like Shane who would go out on water skis, and run events like the pain McShlonkey open, where pretty much anything goes, crazy costumes, chinese downhill and basically just have fun on skis. When JT started ski BASE jumping with Shane, I was convinced that would be my next sport. I had dreams of taking off to ski some crazy shoot and off a cliff between worldcup events. Sounds totally crazy I know, like when would I find the time to do that!?!

Well thats what Shane did. He inspired us all to DREAM BIG! So thanks Shane. I can tell you one thing for sure: I will keep having fun with what I do, and keep the tradition of just being stoked everytime I put my skis on!

My heart goes out to Sherry and Ayla, and you can check out more details on how to help out at http://shanemcconkey.org/. You can also leave your comments on how YOU get stoked out there in life…

Not sure anyone has ever answered that question, so here it goes…

After course inspection, the racers typically all hang out at a lodge at the top of the hill. If there is only one lodge up there, then we’re all packed in there and depending on how small it is, we’re packed in there like sardines. Imagine 70 girls all in one room, plus coaches, hangers-on, waiters, etc… a wild scene.

As the start time approaches, people start making their way up to the start area.

Once there, I have a quick meeting with my technician Andrea. He gives me some last minute info on the skis and perhaps we go over the course again. Shortly thereafter, I go inward and visualize the course with its optimum line, bumps, rolls, and jumps.

As my number gets closer, I do some active warm-up stretches to get the muscles firing. Tara, the US Ski Team Physio uses the stick that helps loosen my muscles one last time. I take off my jacket, Andrea lays down my skis, brushes the excess snow off my boots, and I click in the bindings. Andrea gives the bindings one last tweak, brushes off the top of the ski, towels off the base, and off I go.

Beep beep beep… see ya!

Well, we’re not in Kansas anymore! Nope. This little old town tucked away in deep eastern Europe on the Greek border is quaint, cold, and old. Kinda cool to take a step back in time and walk down cobblestone lined streets and monastery type buildings with peeling plaster and shuttered windows.

But next to all that history is a super long gondola ride from town to the finish area and then 2 more lifts up to the start. Interesting how you see old and modern next to one another. By bringing a World Cup race here, it’s obvious they’re trying to ramp up their tourism.

The hill is pretty darn icy. It’s sent a lot of girls to tears, so we’ll see what kind of carnage we’ll find this weekend.

It’ll be worth tuning in I think. I hope I can take it to the next level.

Later!

Jules

The girl’s side of the World Championships in Val d’Isere is over and done with and I’m truly bummed about how things turned out. Well, that is, I was bummed.

I’ve hit some new lows in my career. Things had come somewhat easy for me in years past. I always seemed to ski fast, mostly in the top 10 and hardly more than 1 second out from the leader. So when I came in 2 seconds, 3 seconds behind, and my body unable to bear the load of a long downhill in the World Champs combined and I pulled up, I hit rock bottom.

I had no idea why I became so slow.

The good news is that I have some clues and I’m reassessing what I have to do to dig my way out of this mess.

I’ll be out in Tarvisio pluggin’ away at my comeback, so make sure to tune in right here at UniversalSports.com!!!

Well, when it rains it pours, huh? The season has been less than amazing and my first race at the World Championships wasn’t all that either: I crashed out. Arrrrrgh… tough for me, really tough.

But in the end, I take a step back and really rejoice about at the very least having the opportunity to turn things around and work out my personal challenges. In my quiet moments after a race (the moments not many people get to see) I am reminded of all the other people out there whose odds are stacked up against them so much more than mine. They have very little opportunity to get out of their personal nightmare. It’s in these moments of clarity that part of my responsibility is to support these people as best I can. For that reason, I just wanted to remind us all that we can give people less fortunate than ourselves a better chance at overcoming their problems by giving…

And you know, that when you GIVE, you also RECEIVE! That can’t be any more true than with this auction… by giving generously, you can get some of the COOLEST GEAR in the process.

The 3rd ANNUAL JULIA MANCUSO CHARITY AUCTION kicks off today, February 5th. The proceeds from the auction will go to Right to Play and Liv. Right to Play as you may know provides poor children in underdeveloped countries empowering life-experience through the lessons of play and sport. These children have so little, that a soccer ball and supervised play might be all they need to get out of their personal predicament.

Liv is an organization run by my older sister April Mancuso. It’s mission is to provide a comprehensive global wellness through promoting personal physical health, spiritual and creative health, and environmental health.

The final auction item list is set and we’ve got kick ass stuff:

Rossignol chipped in a pair of skis and bindings

I got 3 of my POC helmets up for auction

3 speed suits

US Ski Team Jackets

Reusch Race Gloves

POC Goggles

T-Shirts

Race Bibs

and much much more!

Preview all the items here at the Auction Page (Link Below):

http://juliamancuso.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=587&Itemid=34

Thank you everyone for your support for me over the last months and even more importantly, thank you for your generous donations!

XOXO

JULES

It’s been a couple of days since the Maribor races and the big theme of the weekend was no doubt CLUTCH PERFORMANCE.

Tina Maze, one of the best Slovenian skiers had in recent years not lived up to her earlier dominance. She seemed to struggle in the 2 seasons after the 06 Torino Winter Games and so many probably wrote her off.

But this year, she’s come back with serious vigor and the country of Slovenia was abuzz with hopes that perhaps she could put in a strong showing at the Maribor races.

With all eyes on her, she came ripping down the mountain during Saturday’s GS, at every split in the green, the crowd roaring, every moment more energized than the last. Her first GS run put her solidly in the top 5 and the anticipation for the 2nd round was palpable.

There were thousands of crazy screaming Slovenians on hand. I don’t know what might have been going through her mind at the time, but I can imagine that many would be totally daunted by the whole experience: all eyes, all expectations on YOU! I mean, my success was more of a sneak attack. No one really pegged me to win the GS gold in Torino or even really end up 3rd overall in the 06/07 season, so I swooped in under the radar.

Tina on the other hand must have felt a ton of pressure. Well, if she did, then she really didn’t show it, because as soon as she charged out that gate, you could almost feel that victory was imminent. Each turn around a gate was confirmation of that and the crowd just exploded. 3 gates left, made it! 2 more, yes, 1 more… holy crap, she’s going to pull it off! She’s IN THE GREEN! The crowd is going nuts!

What a cool moment in skiing and a great moment for Tina and Slovenia.

Even in personal defeat (I didn’t do too well), I feel blessed to still be able to feel happiness in others’ success.

See you next time!

XOXO,

Jules

If you ever took a look at where most of the alpine skiing web hits come from, you’d probably find that Vienna Austria is on top. It’s no secret then that Semmering is a hoppin’ gig. Everything is well managed, from the parking for the fans regulated by the police to the competitor lounge area with pretty decent food.

The hill was in good condition too and with my body on the mend, I was starting to feel it again. GS 6th place and slalom 16th… man, feels freakin good to crack that top 10 and get some flowers awarded!

Who knows what’s next… it’s a real life saga unfolding: girl on top, girl stumbles and falls off the radar, girl scratches and claws her way back to glory?

Who knows, but let’s find out!

Jules

The Holiday festivities are in full bloom out here in St. Moritz. You can tell, all the stores have their top of the line gear on display with Christmas lights and fake snow confetti. The town is all nicely lit up and festive. And every TV station under the sun is here to cover the race from snowy St. Moritz. Get all the coverage you possibly can to generate the infectious buying spirit! With all this new snow in Europe, people will definitely want to get those new powder skis for Christmas!

Indeed, the world works in mysterious ways… no snow one year, no snow the next and then a dumping the third! You can really feel the difference in energy when there’s plenty of snow falling. It makes a huge difference when you’re at a bib draw for instance like last night and it’s actually snowing. A festive mood, people stoked from their day’s session, drinking Gluehwein, huddling together to keep warm. And the laughter! So infectious.

Yeah, so St. Moritz has been a great host… today we hit the Super G and hopefully, if it ever stops snowing tomorrow we’ll get it on with the downhill.

Tune in to Universal Sports to check out all the drama!

Bye-bye! I’m off to course inspection…

Jules