The NCO FIS athletes are presently skiing down the slopes of El Colorado in Chile, more than 9000km away from Ottawa! That being said, even if we are going through the South American winter, the sun has been shinning since the arrival of the team on August 11th. After 10 full days of incredible skiing, here's the time for us to share what we've been up to!
On our first day up here, the fog was up and skiing was like walking in the dark, but after about 36 hours of being in Chile the sky cleared up and we got to admire the breathtaking scenery. The snow that fell on the night of August 12 made up for some great powder skiing on the following day... Actually, skiing through 30cm of fresh snow with a 35m radius GS ski was a challenging introduction to the new equipment imposed by the FIS... Patrick, Olexa, Juice, Max, Kate, Cassidy and Caitlin quickly ripped some slalom turns on some powdery terrain, that's how NCO athletes break in their new GS skis!
The last 4 days have been dedicated to Super G training up on the new ``back side`` at El Colorado. Snow conditions have been hardening up every day making the track faster and faster. Our athletes and the Estrie Ski Zone team shared a 24 gates long course with a few challenging sections. At 7:00AM, by going up the first of seven T-Bars required to get to the speed track, the team was able to put in some great mileage on the speed skis. The speed bloc has been very productive for everyone and confidence has been building up!
As I'm a little late in the blogging activities, I will go back on what we did before that as well. GS training has been very productive for many reasons... First of all, our FIS crew is taking this development opportunity very seriously and all skiers adopted a positive attitude towards the new equipment that first seemed like it would make GS a whole lot harder. By embracing the new ``boards``, driving the skis around the gates wasn't such harder than with our old, more sidecutted skis. Aside from the equipment, we are lucky to have here, as an invited coach, a recently retired racer from the World Cup Circuit - JP Roy himself. Being amongst the fastest GS skiers in world for more than the last decade, he knows and has lived through all the challenges required in order to make it to the top. He is devoting great energy into sharing all he know about fast skiing with our lucky athletes. He doesn't hesitate do show them how it's done by jumping into the courses! That visual reference is probably the best way to have our group of skiers understand every details of an efficient ski technique. Lastly, the group has a great synergy and shares some important sportsmanship values. They are focused and willing to improve... And they also take the time to enjoy themselves by joking and laughing. Me and head coach Joey are looking forward to an exciting season with this bunch!
We have been treated well here at Farralones. Our home is not too far from the bottom of the mountain, so we were able to ski down home for the first 8 days of the camp. Snow has been melting since then and athletes are now taking a shuttle down the sketchy Chilean switchbacks after skiing. We spend our ``après ski`` by doing some dryland and relaxing around the main source of home heating - the fireplace! Our chef Christian prepares us great dinners at night after which it is time for team meetings and video sessions.
Tomorrow on the last day of our second training bloc, we are going to train GS on Cona. Saturday will be dedicated to resting. We will go and spend a little time in Santiago for a mental break of skiing and snow. We are happy to have Cassidy back on snow after a scary fall where she hurt her knee 5 days ago. After some valuable recovery and medical appointments, she has been cleared to rip some turn again ;) Slowly building up the intensity of it for sure. The rest of the bunch is a little tired so that time off will give us time to heal some minor physical issues. Oh and I forgot to say, they are calling for a lot of snow this Saturday, sorry in advance but the NCOST might be skiing some fresh powder this week-end.
I will keep updating that post every few days, keep following it and share it! Let's share the athlete's love for fast-alpine-ski-racing.
Gabriel
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