World Champs Reflections
In ski racing, like most things, confidence is a fickle friend, but in a sport determined by hundredths of a second, it is paramount to success.
A question my siblings always ask me is “why don’t you just slow down a little and finish instead of always going 100% and blowing out.” But it doesn’t work this way for me. If I don’t give close to 100%, my skiing is very reactive. I start thinking too much and get more and more backseat, not trusting myself to dive into the new turns in a powerful aggressive position, not making the move over terrain at the right time, and not trusting myself to release the skis at the end of the turn.
I’m always searching for the fine line between letting the skis go and totally losing control. For me, my best skiing tip toes back and forth on that line throughout the run. I’ve slowly gotten better at calculating which turns or sections of the course require which side of the balance. Do I hold back here or can I take more risk? Is this turn critical for carrying speed into the next section of the course, or is it more important to give a little bit of speed away to maintain line and stay in the track? Is it more important to make a strong clean turn or should I be hunting for my tuck?
I think about all of these things during inspection and before my run to come up with the perfect ‘game plan’. But of course, as soon as the run starts, many things can change. The snow can feel different, the speeds can be higher, I can get pushed off line, or just not execute properly. It’s in these moments, that instinct takes over and this is when confidence matters the most.
If you feel confident, you hardly think in these moments. You trust your instincts and let the skis run. It’s truly one of the best feelings ever!
But if you’re lacking in confidence at all: If you are unsure where the next gate is, if you question your plan, if you don’t trust your equipment, if you don’t believe in your ability to make the next turn, if you second guess yourself at all. This is when things can start to go wrong. You take an extra split second to make decisions and these split seconds start to compound in every movement and every turn.
It might sound simple, ‘don’t think, just go’, ‘just trust yourself and send it’, but in reality there is always some thinking needed, some turns you have to hold back on. And there are always things outside your control that are going to test your confidence. So ‘just go’ is harder than it sounds.
It’s easy to look at the best athletes in the world and assume that they are always confident and that their confidence comes easily. But the stories that inspired me the most this week were the ones of athletes overcoming obstacles that threatened their confidence but were still able to perform.
For example, Corinne Suter has clearly been struggling the past couple months, not trusting herself and skiing a bit reserved. Then in Cortina (our last WC race), she took a really bad crash, which I’m sure hurt her body and confidence even more. She wasn’t particularly fast in any of the downhill training runs in Meribel either, but on the race day she was able to come out and perform and got a bronze medal.
Ilka Stuhec was also extremely inspiring for me this week. Her mom (and head coach) crashed skiing down the hill before the SG and had to get helicoptered out to the hospital for surgery. Ilka missed the second training run, but still showed up on race day and performed much better than her training runs.
Of course, both of these competitors could have won under better circumstances, and I’m sure they know that, but their ability to face the obstacles and still manage to find the confidence to send it on race day was really inspiring for me.
Racing as an Independent is really hard. There’s no denying that. I have had many times where I’m in the start gate, and I know that the odds are stacked against me. That my competition has more resources, more support, sometimes are better and more experienced skiers than me, have better course conditions or weather. Some days this affects me more than others, but what I learned from World Champs is that even the most supported athletes in the world face things out of their control that turn the odds against them (albeit probably less than independent athletes :)). The only thing to do on race day is to accept the cards you’ve been dealt and do everything you can to find the confidence to trust yourself and your process and your instincts.
This World Champs was a roller coaster of emotions for me. The week prior, I was skiing well and felt very confident in my skiing and ability to perform. Then, I found out three days before I left for Worlds that the US would not be providing me with a Ski Tech (which was previously agreed upon), I was scrambling to figure out how to get slalom skis for the combined without driving 10 hours, and my coach Thomas wasn’t able to come with me as there weren’t enough US credentials for him.
Unfortunately I let all these things get to me, and instead of addressing them and asking for more help and support or even trusting my own ability, I went deeper and deeper into panic mode and started to lose confidence in myself. This culminated with a DNF in the combined, a very slow DH training run, and a pretty nasty crash in the SG which felt like rock bottom. After this I was both very bummed and disappointed in myself for letting these things outside my control affect me so much, so I did what I always do and leaned on family and friends for support :)
I accepted my cards and gave the last couple DH runs everything I had and I am super proud to have turned things around for the second two training runs and the DH race finishing 23rd.
Overall, it was a very big learning weekend both with my skiing and my mental approach, and the fire and passion within is only growing :) I’m so grateful to be able to push myself to my limits so much these days.