Good News from National Championships

As I write, I'm sitting in my hotel overlooking "Narrow Gage," the run we are racing on this week at our National Championships in Sugarloaf, Maine. Although Sugarloaf is considered a big mountain on the East coast, it's fairly small compared to what we see in the West. Regardless, "Narrow Gage" is a great run for racing and has us going 70 to 80 mph in the Super G and Downhill. The course has a lot of flat sections mixed with terrain as well as two steeper sections and a long flat that takers you to the finish. The most intimidating section of the course is called "Headwall" where the run drops into an icy bowl as the hill falls away and eventually spits you out of a gully and into the fastest section where we are clocked at upwards of 80 mph. Even with a great course set and ready to go, the races were off to a shaky start due to bad weather. We sat around in our hotel rooms 4 days straight wondering if we were ever going to get chance to race. After getting pounded by snow, rain and wind the weather finally cleared and the temperature dropped considerably, which set the snow up perfectly for the speed events. Now here comes the good news!

Although its been a long and at times frustrating season I can finally say I've turned the corner and found the speed again! In skiing there's a fine line between skiing well and skiing fast, and I'm fired up to say that I'm skiing fast again with a 2nd place in the Super G at the U.S. National Championships. It was a tight race as I was only .11 of a second behind the winner Kevin Francis and just ahead of world cup winner Marco Sullivan. It would have been nice to win another National title but I'm pleased with the result and can't wait to find more speed in the Downhill tomorrow.