The White Circus...

The prep period is finally over and it's time to race! The worlds best skiers arrived today in Lake Louise, Canada for the first World Cup Downhill of the season. From now to March the "White Circus" will continue almost every weekend and hit nearly every country with snow in Europe. It goes like this: Canada, the U.S, France, Italy, Austria, Swizterland, Slovenia, back to Austria, back to Canada, Germany, Norway and back to Italy. There are only a few one-week breaks in between the hustle and bustle hence why they call it the "White Circus."

The weather forecast looks good for a while so we should have a nice weekend of racing. Unfortunately there will be no turkey and gravy on our thanksgiving, only skiing at 80mph down an icy slope in freezing cold temperatures. The forecast is calling for 0 - 20 degrees this week, which is actually warm for Lake Louise this time of year...last year it was -30!

To prepare for the first race of the season we like to put on the finishing touches by testing our quiver of skis to find which pair is running the fastest. In skiing sometimes hundredths of a second can separate the winner from the runner up so we do our best to leave no stone unturned. I wanted to share a video clip from one of our testing days in Colorado last week. This test track is used to determine how fast our skis are so we can choose the best pair for race day. We usually take about 9-12 runs in the track on 3-4 different pair of skis so it's a pretty tedious process even with snowmobiles to tow us back to the top of the track. Check it out!