Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Europa Cup training

Just a quick note to say that I am in Austria, official training began today for the European Cup race, I am sliding well, today I beat all the women and most of the men and had the highest speed of the second run (higher than all the men) and I set a new personal record yesterday with a 55.93 and 108kmph (I was sliding 57’s in the world cup here last year), not only is my down time improving but my push is back too.



We have 2 more days of training then we race and immediately following the race we will drive to Italy for the Cesana Intercontinental Cup. There are 33 women racing and over 60 men representing 35 countries, which makes for a very full and smelly start house. Iain Roberts, Mike Coutts and Katharine Eustace are all here too (other kiwis) and sliding well. We have no internet access in Igls so sorry for the silence.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Well the selection races are over, I am off to Intercontinental Cup and European Cup races in Europe.

Race one was very close in Lake Placid, Tionette was .2 of a second faster in run one, but in run two I beat her, but with the times totaled she was .07 of a second ahead and won.

Here in Calgary I was ahead in training but Tionette was very fast on race day and was again .2 of a second ahead after run one, in run two the intermediates show I was picking it up and going for a better time, but then I hit hard at the exit of corner 9 and lost too much time there. I had dropped half a second by the finish line.

So now I head to Igls as soon as possible for the Igls Europa Cup race. Then onto Cessana for the Intercontinental cup race, the new system this year means that the points from every race will contribute to your overall world ranking, so although Tionette and I will not compete together this year until the world championships in February we will still be ranked together.

I am headed back to Igls where I spent a whole month in over christmas and January, the training was going very very well until I crashed the day before the world cup in the out run and went off the end of the track and tore ligaments in my ankle, I ended up competing in the race with an plastic air cast on and all my expensive training seemed wasted. So I am looking forward to getting back there injury free and going as fast as I was last January.

It will be interesting to see who ends up competing in IC and how this new world ranking and points table works, a win on IC is worth 150 points where as a 10th in the World Cup is worth 144. A win in European Cup is worth 75 , 18th in World Cup will get you 80. I think that this first EC will have a lot of IC athletes there, as we have two less races than WC and need to pick up two EC or AC races to reach the 8 races that will be counted for World Championship qualification.


Selection races have been good in the way it has made me go through the whole race day process prior to my first international event, but it has meant that there has been no time for equipment testing, so today before we leave we are doing a bit of equipment testing.