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Posted on Wednesday February 10th at 1:20 p.m.
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Hello,
So many things have happened since my last blog. I have competed in my first European Cup event, my first World Junior Championships and I also turned 18.
After my arrival in France I had two weeks training. I trained at both Meribel and Champagny en Vanoise. The training was really good and I made some significant technical changes. All too quickly my training time was up and it was time to race. On the 29th of January I competed in my first European cup event - a GS at Courchevel. I didn't ski particularily well and as a consequence didn't finish the first run. The race was run on the womens world cup track, it was really fun terrian and an awesome set so I was quite dissappointed to not finish. Nevertheless, it was a good experience. It was also my birthday and it was the first time I had ever raced on my birthday so that was something new.
On the 30th of January I travelled to the World Junior Champs. I stayed in a wee bed and breakfast in a little town called Passy in the Mont Blanc region. It was a super nice place and the food was awesome. We got a three course dinner every night! The next day was the first event of the Championships - the Super G. This was held at Megeve, and was a really fun course. I skied pretty well but had a brain explosion and lost about 3 seconds, which meant I finished pretty far back. The day after was the Slalom. This was run as a night Slalom at Chamonix. It was really cool to do a night slalom as I hadn't done one before. Unfortunately I crashed in the first run. I then went home and watched the second run on Eurosport, the top 30 were live. It was such a great atmosphere at the night slalom, there were heaps of spectators and people watching were standing the whole length of the course. There were so many people at the bottom of the course that you had to take off your skis to walk through the crowd to reach the lift. It was great to be able to watch the best girls, they were amazing.
The next couple of days consisted of the downhill training runs. This was also held at Megeve, on the same track as the Super G. I was quite far our in the first one, I didn't ski very well and wasn't quite sure how the course would run as it was only my first downhill. On the second day I was alot more confident but I screwed up this one turn and flew off a lig sideways towards the bee net. Luckily I managed to land on one ski and avoid crashing, but it was a really, really close call. In the downhill race I didn't carry much speed through that turn and ended up a long, long way back but it was a really good experience.
The last race of the World Champs was the Giant Slalom. This was held at Les Houches. The weather wasn't very good and it was really foggy down the course. It was also snowing but it was quite warm so the snow melted when it landed on your clothes so it wasn't long before everyone was quite wet. For the first run, the fog lifted for about the first 30 girls but by the time I came down, it was really dense and I could only see 3-4 gates through my dripping goggles. My first run wasn't the best, I over-skiied the course and finished the run just under 6 seconds out. My second run was much improved, despite thw fact that the weather wasn't. I finished the second run just over 3 seconds out so that was a much better result.
Overall, going to the World Junior Champs was a great experience. People can tell you how good the best girls in the worl are, but you don't really believe it until you see it. The girls who won the technical events are already in the top 10 in world cup, so the bar is pretty high. I now have a much clearer picture of where I need to get to in order to be competitive on the world stage.
As the world champs were over, I drove back to Pralognan la Vanoise. I had two days off recovering and packing my gear. I then flew back to Canada going from Geneva to Heathrow, Los Angeles and finally Calgary.
My plan looking forward is to have a couple of days training and then going back into the States to raceat Snowking, Wyoming at the start of next week and then possibly carry on to Aspen for the Norams there. I am also pleased that the weather is warm in Calgary, for the time being.
Thats all for now,
Allie