Today we had a great day, the girls that are participating in the Speed camp, slept late, (needed rest), did a couple of hours of homework and spent a good hour and a half doing line training (in the form of some great Go Karting) to prepare for the upcoming camp.
Our guest coaches will bring a good deal of speed experience to the camp and I know the girls will get a lot out of it, tomorrow they will start the day with Melanie Turgeon.
Mélanie is a former member of the Canadian national ski team, a 3 time Olympian and the 2003 DH World Champion.
Our other girls will have had a good GS day at Mt Garceau, good cooperation from the mountain and the ability to create multiple training situations will make for a great camp.
For the MSA GS and SG races we had on the Women’s side a challenging time of it.
On the morning of the first GS Mother Nature was a little too bountiful with a 25cm dump and strong winds.
The race was changed to a single gender race for the Women and, after lots of work on the course it was deemed a go so, we ran the first run.
Things went reasonably well with some very good skiing and good positions for the 2nd run.
As the 2nd run progressed we became concerned for the safety of athletes that may have to leave the course mid run, making the decision to pull our remaining athletes due to the conditions. With the high DNF rate (30 of 76 finishing both runs) and the number of girls unexpectedly finding themselves skiing in the rough snow off course or, for some, off their feet in piles of snow, proved a good move.
The plan was to run a Men’s race the next day and a dual gender race the following day with 2 SG races on the last day.
As you may already know the Men’s race ran under clear skies.
Unfortunately the day of the 2nd GS’s dawned with another 20cm’s of fresh, high winds (gusting to 80km’s!) so the 2nd GS races were cancelled, Major Bummer for ski racing!
But I was super happy to see that the NSA Women’s team (okay Men too) was out there ripping the POW and fighting to get as many runs in as they could!
The situation put us at the point of some heated discussion at the captains meeting, us and a couple of other programs, in favor of running the missed GS race (FIS rules allow a ROC to change a SG into a GS if the conditions warrant it) and moving the SG’s to the day before the speed camp.
After spirited debate the ROC decided to loose the GS and run the 2 SG’s in spite of iffy weather, soft snow and light conditions, for the 2nd race.
Their decision, lead to us pulling most of the girls from the 2nd race. (Only 3, the most experienced athletes at speed, were put in the 2nd SG race).
While the 1st SG went off without a hitch, our concern about the track and light situation for the 2nd race was correct for our younger girls.
The 2nd race started late, putting the most challenging sections of the track into flat, shadowless visibility, coupled with deteriorating track conditions
(caused by the need to set the 2nd race close to the 1st race track as, off that, the snow was soft and required lots of time to prepare), made it the right choice.
The girls are amped about the day tomorrow, happy healthy and ready to go.
I’ll let you know how things go tomorrow.
Best regards, Nick Kwasniak
Director of Conditioning and Injury Prevention
Women’s FIS Coach
