It started with a Europa Cup race in Alp D'huez, France. I made it up the famed Tour De France stage that is even stepper than it looks on TV with endless 'hitch-back' turns.
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| Alp D'huez road. |
In the qualification race I placed an agonising 33rd (just 0.02sec from the 32 to proceed onto the finals)
I had a costly mistake where I knuckled a jump loosing valuable speed and had to wait for the 2nd to last competitor to bump me from a final spot.
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| Alp D'Huez |
We arrived on the training day to a course with some huge features, super icy injected snow, and very little space between each aspect ensuring that you did not have time to think about your head rattling like crazy.
Unfortunately around 50 cm of fresh snow feel, pushing back qualification a day and slowing down the track. My race run was not spectacular to say the least, I was way off the qually time, but learnt a huge amount with what it takes to be fast on a course like that.
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| Dumping! |
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| Les Contamines track. |
I was lucky to have my older brother join me for this race and act as my 'super coach' helping me out with a lot of things I usually have to deal with by myself. The track was not the safest or easiest, some jumps we were completely overshooting and landing on the flat resulting in some good 'shin bang' and unfortunately 3 athletes had season ending knee injuries just in the training!
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| Final jump & pitch/ dumping pow! |
I have learned a huge amount these past few weeks and I now know what I need to change to be fast. The way you work terrain and also jumping transitions/ air-position plays a huge factor and is very different to alpine technique. I now have 4 days training in Switzerland before my next race on the 25th Jan. Time for change!
Check out the video below from a powder day at Chamonix- Mt Blanc, 16th Jan
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