Garmisch Recap and Olympic Travel Prep
Garmisch - Patenkirchen, Germany
I think Garmisch might be my favorite stop on the World Cup Speed Tour so far. It is notorious for being the hardest hill on the women’s circuit because it is dark and bumpy and icy! The track has a little bit of everything: jumps, flat glide sections, steep pitches, 90 degree turns, and long traverses which made it both very challenging and super fun.
I wasn’t very nervous for the first training run day because I kind of like when I know other people are nervous. I use their nerves to give me confidence and just convince myself that if everyone else is nervous, then I have the opportunity to have a leg up on them if I remain calm and confident. Also, I had a big realization last weekend in Cortina that my mindset in downhill needs to be as aggressive as possible even on the first training run. This is because if I think about skiing conservative on the first training run (which some people do to feel out the hill) I start to have really bad technique and never feel the flow of the hill or the course. So for me it’s better to have an attacking mindset and just ski a bit rounder in sections or tuck a little less for the first training run (so I don’t do something stupid and explode the first time on the hill like in Lake Louise).
However, the first training run turned out to be pretty wild! I got to the bottom and could feel the adrenaline rushing through me. It was a pretty incredible feeling. It was also the first time I felt really proud of myself for a first DH training run, because I had done everything I was trying to do, made all the gates, and knew a bunch of places I could look for even more speed. The second training run was shortened because of weather and went okay but I way over skied the course, not anticipating how much easier everything would feel with less speed.
The downhill race also was going very well until I started to lose the line at the bottom of the course and got pulled super low and out of the track for the last two splits losing two seconds. Overall, I was pretty disappointed that I couldn’t execute a full run but still proud of the progress I’ve made in downhill so far this year. Everyone keeps telling me that speed (and downhill in particular) takes time and this first year is just about seeing the tracks and getting to know the hills. But I’m not a super patient person, so this has been hard for me as I continually am looking for ways to improve as quickly as possible. But I am working on trying to find the balance of pushing harder while not panicking and messing up things that are already trending positively.
I was extremely excited for the super-g at Garmisch on Sunday, and had a really well thought out game plan (I thought). Unfortunately I went off a roll in the middle of the course a little backseat and one of my skis was caught in the air, causing me to miss the next gate. This dnf stung a lot for me. I felt like I didn’t take advantage of an incredible opportunity. In reality though, every World Cup is an incredible opportunity to put my best skiing forward. So mostly this hurt because I didn’t quite understand what went wrong. It seemed like a random error and I don’t think I would have approached the run any differently than I had, looking back. But after watching the video, I realized that moving over terrain has always been a weakness of mine and this is something I need to continue to work on to gain consistency in my skiing. I know the fast skiing is there, I just need to keep working on these little things that still cause my skiing to be volatile. So that’s exactly what I am going to do!
Olympic Travel Prep
My team has been careful all season long with covid. But the past couple weeks with Omicron we have been going into even stricter lock down to make sure we don’t miss any races. In Garmisch we ramped this up even more and I started my pre Olympic travel protocol. The first thing we need is a 96 hours before flying pcr test which we took Saturday evening. Then I drove with one of the US Ski Team staff members who has already had covid (because I am not technically in the US Ski Team bubble yet) on Monday to Innsbruck to get a 72 hours before flying PCR test. The accreditation applications and customs declaration forms are a bit tedious but the USOPC has been awesome with communicating everything we need (test results, passport, vaccine card, flight itinerary, Olympic credentials etc.) and they provided a pretty straight forward step by step process. Now we are spending two days in a mini quarantine in Zurich before flying out tomorrow, Wednesday 6 pm CET to land in Beijing on the morning of the 3rd! We are taking a charter flight operated through FIS for health (COVID exposure) reasons and also because there are hardly any flights to China right now. (My brother Connor is actually currently trying to move to Shanghai and navigating the commercial flight schedules has been extremely hard as the number of flights is hugely reduced and the seats are completely sold out and only available through travel agencies.) So I feel very lucky that all our logistics are being taken care of and that we get to travel to China at all! I am very much looking forward to flying to Beijing and to experience my second Olympics. It will definitely be different from the first, but change is fun and exciting :)