Wow, we are already ten days into the European leg of our season. Time flies over here, especially when we get so focused on one race, or a series of races. We were in Val Gardena until this morning. Val Gardena is situated in northern Italy. From the start of the downhill course you can look 360 degrees at amazing panoramic views of the Dolomites. They take a lot of pride in their annual ski race and this year they built the course to perfection. The famous camel jumps were massive this year, with the longest flight being measured around 85 meters (roughly 255 feet) from takeoff to landing! The camel jumps only claimed one racer this year, Silvan Zubriggen who tore up his knee after he crash landed, but every racer breathes a sigh of relief once you are safely past that section of the course! Another nice perk of the Val Gardena week is that the races always start at 12:15, to take advantage of what little sunlight creeps in to the steep valley, so we got to have a pretty relaxed schedule of leaving for the mountain at 9 every morning. Coupled with the amazing pasta for lunch and dinner every day, the group was pretty bummed to be leaving town.

We are up in Austria now, we are at a ski area called Altenmarkt, just south of Salzburg, for some Europa Cup races. It has been dumping snow here all week and the temps are cold so I think I will finally get that free skiing that i have been searching for! These Europa Cups are a chance for us to stay sharp in this week off that we have before we head to our next World Cup in Bormio right after Christmas. This week will be nice to get in some time just freeskiing and racing in a low stress environment. A good opportunity to work on equipment issues and to recharge the batteries before Bormio, which is notorious for being the most physically tiring course on the circuit.

I wil let you know how it goes.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 16th, 2007 at 3:45 pm and is filed under marcosullivan. 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.