First, I wanted to share a James Clear (my favorite newsletter) quote that exemplifies what I was trying to convey in my blog last week:
“What is the most likely cause of failure? Before it happens, how can you prevent it? If it happens, how can you recover?”
I’ve spent a lot of this season focusing on the ‘how can I prevent it’ but am now realizing that the ‘how can I recover’ is equally important!
Now an update from the past week:
I just had my best DH FIS point result of the season in the Crans Montana Europa Cup and my first thought when crossing the finish line was “wow I really blew that.” I actually thought this while skiing too, as I wasn’t executing my line very well and wasn’t skiing as aggressively or cleanly as I should have been. But I kept trying to refocus on the next section and kept pushing myself throughout the run. I remember thinking “okay you messed up there, focus on nailing this next section.”
Luckily Crans Montana is a super technical hill, and you have multiple spots to gain speed, so it is not like other downhills where if you make one mistake you’re out of the running. But, I could have been a lot faster.
It’s an interesting feeling to be congratulated on a run you feel wasn’t even close to your best: I am always appreciative of the praise, but wish I could let people know how the skiing really felt. That being said, there’s a lot of luck in sport and sometimes, like Sunday, the luck is on your side, so I will definitely take it!
I think most ski racers feel like they can always improve their run in one way or another, but there are definitely some runs where you feel like you gave it everything you had and executed as best as you possibly could (I felt this way after St. Moritz), and this is what I’m shooting for each run!
Reflecting more on this past week of racing Europa Cups, I realize that it’s a testament to the progress I’ve made in downhill that I was able to have a run with mistakes and still come 7th in a Europa Cup and score a 25 FIS point result!
The entire week was so much fun because every day I was able to progress. I watched my video and could see where I was losing time. I came up with a game plan each day and attempted to execute. Every day I learned more about the hill, and my own skiing, and was able to improve. I can’t express how great it feels to be able to do this! But knowing I have even more speed and potential makes me very excited for more racing and more opportunities to put an entire run together.
**The Europa Cups are a really great environment for working on different things in a lower stakes race (not a world cup) while still having a really competitive field to compare your skiing against. Plus Stef and I are starting to know the Europa Cup girls from the other nations more and more which makes the races even more fun!**
I was talking to Alison Mollin (a young US 2004 who came over to race Europa Cups with her dad and has joined our Europa Cup squad for some races) about how downhill is all about trying to learn lessons from your skiing and the hill as fast as possible during a race series. This is even more important because most of the European athletes we compete against have all been on these tracks multiple times for training, National Championships, Europa Cups or World Cups, so as American’s we are always at a slight disadvantage when we come to a hill for the first time (for example, in Crans Montana - my first run down the track was very slow because I had no idea what it was going to feel like, while my Bosnian friend Elvedina has been to this hill more than 5 times for Europa Cups and World Cups and was able to take those experiences into her first run and crush it!) After talking to Alison, I realized just how much I’ve improved my own ability to accelerate this learning curve!
I think this is the most I’ve ever believed in my own potential to both perform on the World Cup and make the changes to progress at the rate I need to to fight for top spots, and I’m going to try to take this confidence into the final two World Cups of the season!
We have a DH (Sat) and SG (Sun) this weekend in Crans Montana which will be streamed on US Ski and Snowboard Live.
https://skiandsnowboard.live/
The races are scheduled to start at 11 CET but I usually run 45 mins after the start. You can also watch the race replays on the same platform.
Photo Update:
After World Champs I had three days off which I spent with Breezy Johnson in Annecy, France! They had a lovely farmers market where we bought lots of cheese, meet and bread for a picnic on the lake which we biked all the way around!
This is our Europa Cup Squad: Left to right: Haley Cutler (who joined team Stef and Trish for a month of EC races from Sun Valley), Lauren Macuga (US Ski Team), Keely Cashman (on her shoulders) who got second on Sunday! Stef (also holding up Keely), Teddy (Lauren’s serviceman), Burki (US Ski Team Coach), Steve (Stef’s dad who tuned our skis this weekend and is so kind to come over and help us) and then Alison Molin (from Squaw) and me on the bottom.