Beaver Creek and Lake Louise

Greetings! I am in Beaver Creek Colorado right now. I just came back from Lake Louise, Canada on Monday. Lake Louise was a solid start for our team, the highlight of course being Marco's podium finish in the DH. I was psyched for him and hopefully we can latch on to some of that momentum as a team here in Beaver Creek. Huge day for him!

I had a decent weekend in Canada. I had a mistake filled top section of the DH and ended up 29th. Most of the run I skied pretty well, so I was happy that I was in the mix for the majority of the race. The super-G was solid. I got pretty lucky and moved into the top 30 to start the race. I think I was about 36th on the list at the end of the season, a few guys retired and then a few guys pulled out of the race and I just barely slipped in. This year the top 30 skiers are seeded a bit differently than usual, with the top 7 drawing bibs 15 to 22. Then the skiers ranked 8-15 go from 8-15 and then the skiers ranked 15-30 go either 1-7 or 23-30. Confused? I was too. At any rate, I needed to score points to stay top 30 for Beaver Creek, where it is really important to start early. I had a couple of mistakes again, but skied solid most of the way to end up 19th and more importantly, scored enough points to keep in the first group.

Another highlight of Lake Louise was the ice skating. The ice on the lake outside of the Chateau was in rare form- it had frozen quickly and with no snowfall on top, so it was crystal clear and perfectly smooth.
We had a skate before the Downhill day and it was awesome! Along the edge of the lake, you could see the rocks down below the surface of the ice, making it feel like you were walking on water, which was surreal.

Getting back to Beaver Creek, I took a pretty good crash in my first run on the course. I made it about four turns into the pitch over the "brink" and had too much pressure coming out of the "talon" turn and flew about halfway to the next gate and landed on my back, then into the A-net on the side of the course. Then that spit me out back onto the pitch and I slid for a while before I got it all together. Other than a sore neck and a bruised left shin, I am feeling pretty good. The biggest bummer was that I didn't get to ski the rest of the course... The training run today was canceled, so I am going into the race without having skied the bottom... whoops. More to come after the races!