Bringing everyone up to speed
Hello-
So ends another extremely busy week for the Alpine men in Beaver Creek. The load on the team really extended from Lake Louise, where our only day off was a travel day and a 5am wake up to get to the airport. I finally have a few moments to bring everyone up to speed on what has been going on with me.
In the skiing arena, I had some good training up in Lake Louise but had poor race days. I was on the good side of some weather on the last training day, where I was 5th, and on the wrong side of some weather on the race day. It was actually a bit of a joke. The first 10 or so guys had good light and little wind, then the clouds came over, blocking the sun and the wind picked up. The wind was mostly uphill on the flat section in the middle, so between that and the really flat light, the times were affected greatly. No one ranked in the top 7 in the world finished better than the mid-teens in the race, last year’s overall DH champion Cuche didn’t end up in the top 30. I started in the late twenties and made some mistakes and was well off the pace. The whipped topping of the day was that at number 55 or so the sun came out again and 7 guys scored in the top 30 from there, with bib 64 getting second place. Good skiing, for sure, but certainly a generous helping from good light and favorable wind.
The SG was more fair, consistently flat-light for everyone, but I went out at the “Fall-Away” section of the course.
Needless to say I was excited to put something more solid together for Beaver Creek, on home soil and with friends and family there supporting me. We ended up having just one training run, with both the second training run and the Super-Combined canceled due to too much snow. I missed two gates on that one training run (along with 30-some other racers) which wasn’t the best feeling for a single opportunity on the hill.
As the race days approached, I found myself having to deal with another issue: the press. I generally get along with the press fairly well. I know that they are just gathering good material for their stories and trying to find interesting aspects of both skiing and the athlete to present to their readers or their viewers.
I just finally had it with the constant questions about Kitzbuhel and how I was feeling. I am moving on from that, which I have to do in order to ski the way that I want to. Further, I wanted to put that behind me to have a clear mental approach to current races and yet I was finding myself drawn back to those issues by every reporter I talked with, every day. Requests to run them through the crash again, or what it was going to be like to get back in a downhill, or “if that was going to be the defining moment of my career” or “what if you don’t come back” “do you think you will still have it”… all started to grate on me. “How are you feeling?” became the opener, with an imploring look qualifying as a follow up question.
So half way through the first media visit after my first training run at Beaver Creek I decided I was moving on, including talking with the media about that particular point in the past.
I actually felt refreshed and feel like it turned into another step in my comeback. The next two races helped as well. I ended up 21st in the DH, with really not that great skiing on the top, then some solid skiing on the bottom. I realized half way down that I needed to be looking for speed and driving and not let the course ski me. The SG was another step up, with some really good sections, a few mistakes, but a good attack from the back. I ended up 24th starting 46th.
Right now we are training SG on the race hill in Beaver Creek. We got a bit of soft snow, but we still got some great training in. We have one more day, then it is off to Europe and one of my favorite venues- Val Gardena!