Wow. Another win, and this time I had to deal with the nerves before my run, not after! I was the 30th to go down in the slalom, and I knew the other girls had runs that would be tough to beat. I have been training a lot of slalom — well, relative to the summer — and I also switched to a stiffer and more aggressive boot, which really helped me in the warm conditions. I just had the mindset of trying to make it to the finish and to ski solid. Nothing special, but no mistakes. It was so cool coming off one of my best downhill runs and being able to hold on to the lead in the finish. The best part was sharing it with my teammates. It was so exciting to see Resi and Lindsey waiting and cheering for me and then getting to stand on the podium together! Stacey Cook was also in the finish cheering us all on and I really felt the meaning of TEAM. We did it ourselves — together.

Zauchensee is an awesome race hill, it winds through the woods and there are tons of little jumps and its always challenging to the finish. I love courses like that. I have a vision of downhill with no gates. We would just have a starting gate and a finish line! Fastest one down wins.

The weather is still incredibly warm. I watched the men’s super combined and saw them shoveling snow on a gate that was all dirt. They were skiing on dirt. You would really think it was April here, but we are supposed to be in the middle of winter. Well, I guess all I can do is enjoy the warm and pray for snow!

Peace and love,

Julia

For more news, updates and information on Julia Mancuso, please check out www.juliamancuso.net

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 9:27 am and is filed under juliamancuso. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.