Many thanks to Community Trust of Southland for their continued support of my racing career – CTOS are an amazing team who support a wide range of activities across the community, including Sport.  This year they have helped towards one of my goals of racing at the World Ski Championships held at Beaver Creek, Colorado 2nd to 15th February.

Following on from my previous post, after leaving Eldora we were lucky enough to stay with a kiwi family in Edwards (many thanks to Kathy & Brett Derwin for your hospitality) for a week of training at Vail before moving into our accommodation at Beaver Creek for the World Ski Championships.

Super G postponed due to bad weather

It was a very intense couple of weeks starting with the men’s super g which was postponed a day due to bad weather.  This was my first experience racing Super G at this level and on the “Birds of Prey” course which is considered one of the toughest race hills in the world but I really enjoyed it. The start was a really steep drop into the course on a slick surface. My skiing was fairly solid for the most part. Over skied it a little bit but my goals for the race were more about technique and experience than anything. Starting bib 57, I was pleased to finish and place 44.

It was quite draining having to race the qualification races with the high intensity of needing to qualify, on top of the high altitude and long courses and then race again the following day in the main event.  Four days in a row starting with the Giant Slalom. For the slalom qualifying race, I had the fastest second time which I was pretty happy about after a slow first run.  In the last race of the WSC I was skiing well but had a DNF in the first run of the slalom – super tough course, 73 gates of steep and icy and the snow started to fall fairly heavily.  Before the snow, the weather had been particularly warm with almost spring like conditions. It was a tough WSC set of races, but I will take away some valuable experiences as we continue with our training and races in Europe.      Enjoy a few images from the races.

Opening Ceremony with the kiwi flag.      Qualification GS course at Golden Peak

Course set by Nils Coberger.       Course inspection on Birds of Prey

Looking down into the stadium at Red Tail, Beaver Creek

Waiting in the finish area for the top 25 athletes – qualification criteria

Training in Vail

Took a little time out from training while we were at Vail to do a bit of a photo shoot for Dirty Dog Sunglasses – had a lot of fun with some great weather and snow conditions.

And this was our ride while in Colorado