Tuesday 23 September 2014

Part 2 of a long over due entry



All right so I'm back in record time to give you the second half of a long over due journal entry. So with out further ado Here is the next part of this long entry and maybe I will add some pictures, we will see how it goes.

So where I left off last time we just finished our three day siesta in Munich before Heading to Shochi for the Paralympics. Now the whole event in Sochi for a long time had all sorts of bad press abotu various things like human rights violations, animal cruelty (some russian billionaire went and stole two Orcas from the wild to be used as a tourist attractions), mismanagement of funds, all the way to corruption at the highest level (I'm looking at you Putin and the IOC). But to be honest none of that even mattered to me at the time because all I wanted to do was to compete and try to win a medal for Canada and the RT Community, that's right people I'm doing this for you.

So to get things started all wrong on our way to the games the Canadian Paralympic Committee decided to book us on a charter flight with the American team in order to hopefully save some scratch, which was a great idea in theory but no one thought to think about the issue of nearly 200 people all travelling with about six to eight very large and heavy bags per person and of course because it was the US team that booked and chartered the flight we were secondary as to baggage priority. Now to keep things simple lets just say that of the 12 people on our team that was on this charter flight we only got a total of six very random bags consisting of two sit skis, three tuning boxes (which were apparently not the important boxes according to the techs) and one duffel bag. We got all our stuff barely in the nick of time but that required allot of frantic calling and organising on the part of the CPC staff and what I'm guessing was nothing short of about $50 thousand bucks in airfare and excess baggage fees. So with that SNAFU out of the way we were finally able to get focused on skiing again.

The first Race that was in the wings was Downhill, and by judging by the 20 deg C weather that the ski hill was experiencing for the last two weeks or so was starting to seem unlikely, but somehow the stars aligned just right that the night temperatures were below 0 deg C and froze the track such that we were able to get training done on a very rough and bumpy course witch was barely navigable. Mind you the window of opportunity to get the training runs and races off was a very small one at that, and if things got delayed then the track very quickly turned in to a snow cone. But due to all the chemicals that were pumped into the snow the fact that there was any snow left at all was a miracle, which was pretty good for a place that is in the sub tropics where less than an hour drive away you can find Palm trees. So getting back to the racing part, the training runs for the downhill went okay for the most part. The first run I didnt finish which sucked, the second run I finished and went fairly well which set me up for a good base for the race. The race it self went all right with no major mistakes but it was the small ones that got me in the end. Crossing the finish line I was in 2nd place right between two other Canadian sit skiers so Canada was sitting 1, 2, 3 for a little while but unfortunately that would not last since there was some pretty good skiers still left to come down so by the end of it all I was 5th which was not bad for my first appearance at the Paralympics. If you want here is a link to the video coverage of my run with the time and Paralympic logo in the corner making it look all official, www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRdC1MqxPVE .



View of the Downhill Start



Coming over the last pitch into the finish of the Downhill

The next race was Super-G which for those of you who don't already know is very similar to the downhill but is not as fast and the gates are set slightly closer together generally ranging in spacing between 45-60m where downhill is faster and has spacing between 60-90m. This race started off a bit rocky as you will see in the video I will link but shaped up pretty good all around until after just after the last interval where the shock bottomed out and the sit ski shot out sideways which resulted in what should have been a 3rd place finish and a medal for me but ended up with me being over 9 seconds back and In 9th place. I know, I know... Things should have gone allot better but when the course is that bumpy and the shock bottoms out like the way it did most people would have crashed in a fiery mess but I managed to keep things under control and still finish. Here is the video anyway and it makes for an educational analysis if nothing else, www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRdC1MqxPVE.



The Super-G start

The other three races didn't go so well. Meaning that I did not finish (DNF) the Super Combined, Giant Slalom, and the Slalom. The Super Combined I crashed in the Slalom component, the Giant Slalom I caught my outrigger (the pole like thing with a ski on the end that I hold in my hands) on a gate about half way down my first run, and the Slalom I crashed out on the second run. The only thing that I will say about those three is that for the SC and the GS the snow some how managed to stay together and was not much of a problem, the Slalom on the other had was a nightmare. It was held on a small slope between the the men's and women's speed tracks in a spot that does nothing but get baked in the sun and even with all the chemicals and slipping and pampering that was done in order to try to save the snow the whole thing was one big sloppy mess. By the second run we weren't even allowed to properly inspect the top half of the course properly and were relegated to having to slip down what is most easily described as a giant slush pit. By the time we were to be running the course and when the sit skiers were set to go, there were rutts and holes so big that you could have easily hidden people in them and no one would have noticed. To keep a long rant short It was literally hell on snow if that is possible.

So with all the races done and behind everyone well all the guys at least the women still had one race to go. the only thing left to do was to celebrate by going to Austria house and since the day of the men's GS was the last night that they were going to be open they had to liquidate all of there liquid refreshments and let me tell you that the Austrians know how to party, it was nothing but free drinks all night long and a whole bunch of very happy people by the time it came to go back to the athletes village.

The departure was fairly uneventful other than my lap top getting lost and then broken before it was finally returned to me thanks to the Sochi staff that was in charge of the baggage but now I have a nice new Alienware 17 gaming laptop that has also got me hooked on Steam which should come in handy on all my travels as a full member of the Canadian Para Alpine Ski Team.

The next event was Canadian Nationals that was held in Whistler BC, and by comparison was very low key compared to Sochi. I came away with a few medals in in Slalom and GS from these quaint little races and not much happened otherwise probably due to everyone being exhausted from the month long World Cup finals and Sochi trip.

Well I think that will be all for now, there are a few things that I have not got to that happened over the summer but to keep this as short as possible I will call it for now, so until next time.

Friday 19 September 2014

Long Time No Post... Sorry About That Everyone

All right I am sorry for not posting anything for the last eight months, and I don't really have a defence as to why since I cant rightfully count sloth as a valid reason. Allot has gone on in those eight months and I will try to cover everything but I may just condense some of it.

So we left off with the World Cup events in Panorama in early December which turned out pretty good and me being sick just before the team was to go to Copper Colorado and to make things short, it didn't go very well in Colorado and that is about all that I am going to say about that, since I don't want to rehash a bunch of bad results.

But on to the Good. After Copper we focused on a bunch of training in order for people to get ready for the Paralympics in Sochi Russia to which I was not sure if I would be going based on my poor performance in Copper. But I put all that behind me and focused on the speed training that we were doing in Nakiska and Panorama over the span of about a month. It was also at these training camps the I was graced with the information and the overwhelming privilege with knowing that I would be following the CPAST team on their entire World Cup Circuit and would also be representing Canada and the RoosterTeeth Community in Sochi at the 2014 Paralympic Winter Games. Now to put this into perspective only about 1% of people who ever enter into completive sport and actually make it to a World Cup level actually get a chance to participate in a Paralympic or Olympic games. And to thing that I would get the chance to embark on a for lack of a better word "Adventure" like going to the Paralympics seems unfathomable, and go I very much did. But not before some other nifty things occurred.

So now we find ourself on New Years Day, enter 2014. I am on a plane to Germany where we will then drive to Austria to a town by the name of Kirchberg Austria which is a quaint little skiing town in a low lying valley where we trained a bit of SL and GS for about a week which was nice and relaxing before the World Cup Finals which were to be held in in Tarvisio, another slightly larger skiing town on the Italy side of the Austria/Italy/Slovenia boarder. The races consisted of two Downhill and two one Super G and one Super Combined race. Now to be true to how the rest of this race series and season played out I need to mention like I have before in other journal posts that I was going through skis like toothpicks, which I was not happy about for obvious cost reasons, so Rossignol if you are reading this I love your gear and what not but it doesn't hold up if your a 200 pound sit skier. Anyway I'm getting a little off target. So in Downhill races you actually do training runs a few days before on the exact run and course set that you will be competing on for safety reasons, and my first run on the course I took it easy as allot of people do in order to feel things out especially because I knew that the surface at the bottom of the track was going to be rough and bumpy, but I still managed to flatten the ski I was using, which by this point was no big deal for me. The next day for training run number two I decide to go all out and see what is possible, bad idea. Everything went well until the very end of the course where it was rough I was going so fast and it was so bumpy that I when I hit the micro terrain with about four turns to go in the course that I separated the bottom from the top of the ski to the point where when we watched the video later that night you can distinctly hear the ski snapping where it sounds like someone taking a large stick and breaking it over there knee and when the video is slowed down you can actually see through the middle of the ski as it breaks and separates, but I still finished that run , yay me. The races went good and not so good but not bad. The first Downhill I finished 5th out, a second and a bit behind first, and in the second DH run I had a similar situation to my second training run but and ended up 10th, the Super-G I was 5th again, and unfortunately I did not finish the Super Combined (hey these things happen, I'll figure it out one of these days). So all in all these races were pretty good and I was a happy camper.

The next stop was back to Germany to spend three days in Munich or München as the locals call it to relax and unwind before heading to Sochi for the "Big Show". Any way not to get into to much detail it was allot of fun, and as a result I took it easy for the third day and rested and slept, it took a good three days for my knees to stop hurting, I can confidently say that was the most walking that I did since I broke my back and my knees sucked to begin with, good thing I use a sit ski.

The next stop was Sochi Russia for the 2014 Paralympic Winter Games, which since this post is getting a bit long and I want to think a bit more as to what exactly I want to say I will continue this later, just hopefully not in another eight months, just kidding.