Boxing Day – 7.15am, I am on the road again. Yes I am heading back out to Bormio so it is the long drive south back to Terminal 5 at Heathrow again. I am hoping that we will be racing again this week in Chamonix where there are 2 night slalom races. Arrived in Bormio and found that we are not racing after all. FIS races only allow 6 racers from each nation, unless they are undersubscribed, we were beaten to it by some others, so we will have a week of training, and can watch the World Cup Downhill instead!
27th Dec – The blister on my toe has popped, I am going to have to be really careful. Blister plasters will need to be used to make sure I don’t do any more damage. It has been a great day as all the top racers in the world are training for the downhill. I went up the list with Axel Lund Svindal and David Poisson who are top 15 racers, it was great chatting to them. They are such big guys, especially Svindal, he is massive. Also we were free skiing today and did lots of bumps and powder – fantastic!
28th Dec – Went over to Oga today which is on the other side of the valley to our normal training area on Stelvio, too many people there because of the World Cup races. Had a really good day of GS training. Managed to get speared by a gate just below my ribs, I was in a tuck and just didn’t see it. That will be a massive bruise later!
29th Dec – WORLD CUP DAY, and we are training at Oga again, that is so unfair! Last year we got to see the whole race and got to chat with the racers in the finish. We did get to see a bit of the race after training it was a really good race. Svindal didn’t do that well, apparently he has been ill! It was won by Andrej Jerman from Slovenia, I didn’t see that result coming, they disqualified Mario Schreiber who came in second due to a boot infringement, I can’t believe that can happen with these guys.
30th December – Snowing today, so the light wasn’t that good, had another solid day of GS training, we will be training on the World Cup piste tomorrow so that should be fun but it will be really hard snow after the race.
31st December – Had a fantastic days training. It all sort of clicked into place. My coach shook my hand at the end and said really good skiing. My GS technique has really changed. Just a shame I don’t have any more races for a while. Really looking forward to this evening. Unlike last year we are being allowed to stay up to see the New Year in, we are going skating and then up to the hot springs. That will be a different way to celebrate!
