Hello,
Here is an update of what I've been up to for the last couple of weeks.
After spending around 2 months in South America I headed home for 4 days and I needed all my time to recover from the journey home which ended up taking me 60 hours! Then I headed down to London for the Metro Ski Show. I like this time of year because once the ski shows come around you get the feeling that the season is getting closer and closer, which is quite exciting, for me as a ski racer anyway.
From the ski show I headed out for some training together with Finlay Mickel to work on GS and Super-G at the Pitztal glacier in Austria. This year the glaciers seem to have taken a bit of beating by the hot weather and lack of snow, however we managed to get some high quality training in despite dodging lots of rocks to get to the training course! My advice to anyone wanting to ski in the summer months is to head for the southern hemisphere, its so much better quality of skiing. My training in Pitztal went well. I was putting in some decent times in Super-G while we were training together with the Slovenian speed team and in GS I trained with the Finland Europa cup team for a couple of days. I also had a great day of GS together with Tom Rothrock from the U.S. team where we were separated only by a few hundredths of a second on every run all day.
After a week in Pitztal I spent a day on the Sölden glacier testing the speed of my downhill skis and working out which ones are the fastest for racing on in the coming season.
While I was in Sölden we were informed that the opening GS of the season was cancelled due to the bad conditions of the glacier at Sölden. Actually we had made the decision not to race the GS on the previous day to allow me to train more slalom so it didn’t really affect me.
In the last few days of October I headed down to the Mölltal glacier in Carinthia to meet up with the slalom team. Unfortunately, we didn’t have much luck with the weather, although the snow was very much needed. We did get some training in and I figured, you have to race in the bad weather sometimes so it’s good to be ready for it! My form in slalom is good, despite that I really trained much less this year, but I think the speed training has made me a more stable and versatile skier which in turn has helped my slalom.
Now I'm home for a week or so re-charging my batteries for the long winter. Things are looking good, I feel in my best form yet coming into the season and all my equipment is working well so its down to the races.
Alain’s wife, my sister in law, is expecting a baby on the 8th November, so I'm currently on standby for the race up in Finland, if there are any complications with the birth. I will be in North America later in the month preparing for the super combined and the slalom in Beaver Creek in the 1st week of December.
Take care
Noel
