I couldn’t be more glad to have experienced the Norway World Cups like the guys had all said. I always heard that the Americans enjoy the track there, and since it usually has cold winter snow similar to what we often see in the US, our guys also frequently perform well there. And this year was no different, with 6 guys inside the top 20 on the DH race day. I can’t remember the last time this happened for our team, but I was so proud to be a part of it. Seeing the guys you train with every day have such good results makes it easy to have faith in yourself, since you suddenly have a good reference point at the head of the race. “If we are the same speed in training, and they’re fast in the race today, why shouldn’t I be as well?”

I got a handful of messages after these races asking, “what changed?” And fair enough, it was a shitty last month. Wild to come off of getting last in every race to immediately having two career bests. If you read my last post you can probably figure this out, but I realized how important it is for my skiing to have energy and be able to bring intensity to a race run. All January I was skiing fine technically and tactically, but just wasn’t able to put any energy into the ski. And turns out, most of skiing fast at this level is having the confidence to commit to the turns that other guys won’t, and to have the power in your body to pull it off. This one key lets you actively search for speed instead of just riding passively along the line that you have planned. It lets you tuck for that extra second coming down a pitch when the lights go out. And that extra second is where the difference is made I think. So moving forward I need to be more conscious of my energy levels and make sure I’m ready to bring as much intensity as possible to race days.

A perfect example of this is watching River ski in Palisades last weekend. I know he always loves skiing at home, and is able to use the energy from the crowd in his own skiing. This lets him think about it like putting on a performance for the crowd, and when it’s about something bigger than yourself, I think it becomes easier to focus and commit to your fastest skiing. Watching how much passion he put into that second run was one of the more inspiring performances I’ve seen in a minute, and makes me want to have that same feeling in the finish someday. Always grateful to have teammates to inspire me in every aspect of this sport, and push me to be better.

But now I find myself in a weird situation. I have lower than 15 points in both SG and DH, which means I can’t score FIS points in Europa Cups or Norams, but I also didn’t ski fast enough to make World Cup finals. So then I find myself in this position of having my season essentially be over on February 18th, aside from US Nationals at the end of March. But the next step ended up being a fairly easy call for me in the end. As long as there’s good conditions here, it’s time to go to work and prepare for next season already, even though its early. So we went to eastern Italy for some Europa Cup SG races in the rain and bumps to get some more training in race conditions. Being there purely to practice executing on race day is a unique feeling, taking some of the pressure off but also making it challenging to take as much risk as you normally would.

And then it’s straight over to Reiteralm, Austria to train some GS. I feel that when I ski a full season of speed I get a bit lazy with some of my fundamental techniques, since often you can get away with things like leaning in on those big, long DH turns. But you watch guys like Marco and Cyprian ski, and even if you can make it down without great technique, the guys who are winning are doing it through powerful GS-style skiing, nothing lazy. So I’m here doing double sessions every day, trying to get my technique in a place before we stop skiing where I can come back fresh after summer break and start with a solid foundation. I love this part of the job, where you have to buckle down and grind. The process of trying to be great at something is rewarding in and of itself, so these long days here training bring a certain kind of satisfaction. Anyway, enjoying the process here, and trying to trust it along the way.

I hope these posts can eventually reach some kids like I was one day, curious about what life actually looks like on the World Cup but no idea how to find out. Time will tell I guess; just gotta ski faster so more people can see this. Or maybe they’ll just go out and find out for themselves by just doing it. Only one way to find out..