Right away the weather was challenging and made for some hard conditions to jump in. I made the best of it, and tried my best to put high level jumps in play. Official training had some wet snow in the track and strong wind that didn’t help my timid first jump. So I went up with a new attitude and tried to be more aggressive from the starts to put me in a better position to start my move. I felt better right away and knew I could have a solid competition round next.
Comp round/first race: I went up knowing I could put in a solid competition round. I have been working a lot on the metal side of the sport and being in the right state of mind for competition. Doing this has helped me with my confidence going into competition and getting what I wanted done. I put down another great jump and put myself in a good position for the race.
Unfortunately the conditions made for some hard times in the waxing department and trying to pick out the correct skis. I did my best as did the rest of the team, but we were certainly missing something about the skis as we were much slower that we ever are. I thought I had good race with the conditions and moved up from 31st and to 23rd.
Day 2: We woke up to heavy snow, It wasn’t until we reached the hill that we saw the strong winds on the hill. It wasn’t much later that we saw that jumping was canceled and they would use the provisional competition round from Saturday morning. Unfortunately that was a much shorter jump that my competition from that day and put me much further back in the starting order.
I knew right away from testing that we were going to have excellent skis. I have had some very positive races this year so I was confident that I could move up the result list. Going out I set a solid pace and caught Mikko Kokslien who eventually set the fastest time of the day. But Later in the lap I experience some bad luck on the downhill which slowed me down. After making up some solid time I was then delayed when I got caught in a crash at the bottom of a downhill transition going into the long but fast uphill. The train I was with skied away and I was forced to ski the rest of the race on my own trying to get into points. Fortunately, the world cup course is very hard which suits me very well. I was able to ski up ten places from 39th and finish 29th.
With the bad luck I experienced this trip, I would say it was a very promising weekend. This was the first time I have finished in points both days, which will help me solidify my spot in the top 50 world ranking list. I am looking forward to Liberec, CZE where we will have two more individual events. I am looking to crack to top 20 results there and try to get myself close to top 30 in the world.
Stay tuned!
