Nendaz 2010
Following the great race in Austria, we drove a million hours – or, at least it felt like a million hours to drive our gutless rental car to Leysin, Switzerland where we trained for a couple of days. Leysin is quite close to Montreux, which made for a nice day trip for us on our day off. Once the sun came out, the views were amazing and the snow was perfect and we made some great strides in our snowboarding.
One of our highlights in Leysin was a team dinner at the Fromagerie, where we enjoyed a traditional raclette: melted cheese on potatoes and cured meats. After dinner, the real show started. There is a guy who makes the cheese right there in the restaurant! He put 280 litres of milk into a gigantic copper cauldron and put it over the fire. Michael was tasked with stirring the milk until it was exactly 55 degrees Centigrade (about 35 minutes later). Then they put some enzyme in the hot milk to create the curds. After scooping the curds into cheesecloth and packing it up, they pressed the excess fluid out of it with a huge log contraption and Voila! Cheese! They cure the cheese for at least a year before it is ready to be served and then it is returned to the restaurant and fed to the guests.
After the great training in Leysin, we trekked a couple of hours to Nendaz – just east of Verbier. Nendaz hosted a Europa Cup event and will be hosting a World Cup this coming Sunday.
We thought it would be great training to race the Europa Cup, as both races are on the same run. Pretty much all of the girls who race World Cup were in the race and the event was quite stacked and pretty much a World Cup without the points or the prize money. But seeing as I race for fun, I was keen to go.
Kimi had great qualifying runs, winning the qualifiers. I was not so fired up and managed to qualify 9th and Caro qualified 10th.
In my first round of the finals, I raced against Isabella Laboeck from Germany. She has been racing well lately, but I beat her in both runs and moved on to the quaterfinals to race her teammate, Anke Karstens. Anke had just beaten Kimi, so I felt no remorse when I beat her and moved onto the semifinals.
In the semifinals, I raced against Selina Joerg, also from Germany. My first run against Selina, I laid down a pretty good first run. In my second run against her, she made a huge mistake and hit the wrong side of the gate. The wrong side of the gate is fixed quite well into the ground and is not very forgiving when you crash into it. Just as she crashed, I made a mistake too. I looped out of the course. I thought I would have enough direction to carve around and make it to the next gate and keep going. I did, kind of. I did carve into the powder at the edge of the course, but the fence was a little closer than I thought! My board slid under the netting of the fencing and my body was still on the inside of the fence! “Uh oh!” I thought, “This is going to hurt.” Then my hip made contact with the fence post – which was a slim stick holding the net fencing in place. The post popped out of the ground! I kept going and took out another post! Amazed that I was still on my feet and moving, I carved back into the course and finished the race! Selina was not able to catch me and I moved onto the Big Final while she went to the small final.
I got to the top to race for the gold and guess who I should meet? Nicolien Sauerbreij from the Netherlands – the girl who beat me last week! She got a free pass in her semifinal round as Michelle Gorgone from the USA got injured and dropped out of the race – so Nicolien was fresh and ready to go. In the first run, I rode hard and I beat Nicolien by about half a second. In my second run, however, I made a mistake on a heelside early in the course and lost a lot of speed. I tried to make it up by charging hard. I moved into a toeside turn, hit some ice and ended up on my face – with snow caked into my helmet to boot! I got up but there was no chance to catch her and I had to concede first place to Nicolien for a second race in a row. But second was pretty good training for the World Cup this Sunday!
Michael brought home his first Continental Cup victory! Jasey rounded out our podium by finishing third, while Kimi was 9th and Caro was 13th.
