Well it’s official: World Cups #2 and #3 will be held in Hochfilzen, Austria over the next two weeks. We were slated to head over to Annecy, France for the third WC but they have had an incredibly mild start to the winter there and had to cancel. So Hochfilzen is picking up the slack. Although I’m bummed that we won’t be traveling to France – I was really looking forward to seeing a new World Cup venue – it’ll be nice to eliminate one travel day.
We arrived to our hotel here in Hochfilzen last night after a longer day of travel than expected. Ironically enough, we left Ostersund in a snowstorm. Then, after a 3-hr layover in Stockholm, we arrived in Munich just in time to sit on the bus and wait for another hour and a half. When you send the whole world cup down to Central Europe at once, it is inevitable that someone’s bags will be lost. So, we sat on the bus in the parking lot and waited for a few of the Norwegians to get there bags. After that, a two-hour trip, and we were at the hotel by 9:30.
The tracks look good here. They’ve laid out about 3.5 km of manmade snow and it has been snowing all afternoon. It’s a quick turnaround during this phase of racing and we’ll be back at it again on Friday morning with the Sprint Race.
Here are a few pics from the races last week, courtesy of Sam Merrens. Sam – Thanks for the pics and good luck this weekend if you get the chance to race!
![](http://lowellbailey.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/foto.jpg" "Awards Ceremony for the Men's 10km Sprint")
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