I ended up getting my best World Cup result ever in Les Contamines, France! The course was our first real ski cross course on the circuit. It consisted of bigger jumps with great transitions to land on, off camber floater doubles, and features that you had to nail to gain acceleration. It was a course I wanted to ski over and over again.

     

    My qualification run was smooth and felt easy. I came out of the day with a 2nd place finish, 15 hundredths of a second off of Ophelie David. On race day I had first lane pick all through my heats except for the finals. Each heat I was following one person down the course. I followed Karin Huttery (Austrian) twice and saw that she made the exact same mistake off of the same jump. Once in the finals, Karin and I were fighting for the 3rd position for the first few features. She ended up getting out in front of me. I was patient and waited for the right time to make my move. Ophelie ended up crashing on some rollers as she was trying to make a pass on Ashleigh.  I then made my move over a jump and passed Karin before her the spot that she had troubles with in the past two rounds. Ashleigh and I were in 1st and 2nd!

     St. Johann, Austria was the last stop on the circuit that I expected to do well at this year. I went into the race with the mentality of getting through it all! They injected the course which makes it rock solid, like an ice rink the whole way down. There were some tight turns and rough landings. This course succeeded to make the best ski cross racers in the world look like they were in Nancy Green skiing on icy moguls all over again. There were 4 helicopter evacuations for people that got hurt though out the 3 days on the difficult course.

My first day of training on it was far from fun. I was skiing very tentatively on the icy conditions. On qualifying day I had two training runs before the race. After a bit of a crash in my first run, I pulled it all together and finally skied a smoother run. I ended up coming in 3rd place in the qualifying run. I was pretty stoked on the result after all of the bad feelings I had on my skis the last couple of days. I skied more aggressive and it paid off.

On race day there was a huge crowd and the atmosphere fueled me. Being a night race, everyone was excited about the show. The organizers did a great job putting the whole event together. Each round we had to sled up to find a Taxi waiting for us half way up the hill in the woods which would take us to the top of the course. I had first lane choice for my first 2 heats and got the hole shot out of the first turn both times. My skiing felt strong. In the semi finals I was in the second lane and got pinched by two girls, one on each side of me. I just held my line and one girl ended up crashing right beside me, and I was able to squeeze into 2nd place for the whole way down. In the finals Ophelie David got ahead and I was fight for second place with Meryll Boulangeat. Meryll managed to cut underneath me and slide into second. I came close to her a couple of times for a pass, but ended up in 3rd place.




    I am really happy with my result! We’re now off to Les Contamines, France for the next World Cup.