LesContamines, Flaine, and Lake Placid

As I sit here in Aspen on our day off I thought I would check in and do a recap of the Les Contamines, Flaine, and Lake Placid World Cups. Then I'll do another entry to give you a quick peek into what's goin' on here at the X games. 

Les Contamines was a disappointment.  I was okay in qualifying finishing 8th.  Again I felt like race suits skewed the results.  In the round of 32 I got 2nd gate pick against Markus Wittner and Chris Del Bosco.  I came 2nd out of the gate.  Then down toward the finish, as I was trying to make a pass on Wittner, Del Bosco snuck around the left side and took me by inches at the finish.  It was tough to not even make the quarter-final. 

Flaine was a tough course but it made for a great competition.  I qualified 8th so again I had bad gate picks.  I did have a couple sections figured out on the course, however, so I was able to make passes all day long.  Fortunately guys just kept making mistakes in front of me and I was in a position to capitalize.  Flaine was my first podium of the year.  I scored a 2nd place and it placed me 3rd in the overall standings. 

Lake Placid was frigid when we arrived and finally we got to take a day off while others were up getting frostbite up on the mountain.  We put together a cool video here with our helmet cams so make sure you check it out.  I made a mistake in qualifying and barely made the top 32 but in my opinion the gate pick wasn't going to make a big difference here.  I got past the round of 32 after a rough battle with Xavier Kuhn, but then we had a new visitor on the tour, Daron Rahlves.  He didn't go to Europe because he wanted to stick to the North American races this year.  Of course he was in my quarter-final heat.  It was a déjà vu of last year's Xgames. 

I was 2nd out of the start, I tried to make a pass on Lars Lewen and got caught up with him.  At that point Daron capitalized and made his pass.  I still battled with him through the whoops, but in the end he took the transfer spot.  Daron ended up 5th and I was 13th.

Make sure to download my videos from http://public.me.com/pcpuckett