Today was the World Juniors Down Hill race here in Rocarasso, Italy. The last three days of DH training/racing have been awesome weather. 60 degrees and Sunshine all day long. Sure doesn't feel like winter!
Last night was the bib draw for the DH race today. Here's how it works: The top 15 ranked racers (I was ranked 16th) get to choose any number 1-30. Then the next 15 are drawn at random and fill in the vacant numbers up to 30. All 30 of us were standing in a group to the side of the stage as we were called up one by one. The top 15 guys picked the top 15 bibs because of the soft snow and the fast deteriorating conditions racer by racer. My name was drawn and I got number 30. Not exactly prime placement, but you take what you get try to make the best of it.
I skied the super-steep top turns like a champ,(I hadn't skied them the way I wanted to up to this point,) went off the jump perfectly on edge with good weighting and landed exactly where I wanted to, then hit the huge bumps that took out a large percentage of the field starting after #20 and got punched low. I fought it and threw it down into the next gate but caught the bumps there as well which put me extremely low and in slush/sluff coming into the compression right footer onto the flats. I almost went to the outside pannel of the second gate of that double, then almost missed the first left gate of the double off the jump.. I had to slide it on the perfectly flat takeoff to get the direction I needed for the gate following, and entered the 35 seconds of flats without speed. Over all I skied great but was still pissed of course when I got to the bottom. I ended up 29th at 2.7 out.. I'm looking forward to SG tomorrow though! Hopefully it holds up!
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