World Cup Woes

Only one week into the season and we've already seen a handful of ups and down. Lets start with the bad news first. In the first race we lost one of our most promising young teammates, Erik Fischer, in the Downhill at Lake Louise. He was skiing well on his way to the best performance of his young career when he flew off of the finish jump, landed on the tails of his skis and couldn't recover. He was going about 70 mph when he fell and tore his ACL, thus ending his season. Erik undergoes ACL reconstructoin surgery tomorrow.

Secondly, we lost the overall World Cup champion, Aksel Svindal, yesterday in a Downhill training run in Beaver Creek, Colorado (the second world cup on the tour). Aksel sat back off of the biggest jump on course, which propels you 150 feet down the moutain 20 feet in the air. He landed on his back, went into the safety net, and ended up cutting himself badly on one of his skis. He also broke a few bones in his face and will likely be out for the season. This is an unfortunate reality in our sport.

Onto the good news!! Marco Sullivan, one of my best friends on the team scored his first World Cup podium as he was 2nd in the Downhill last Saturday. He just returned from training injury this fall when he broke his heel off of a big jump in Portillo, Chile. It was a great way to start off the season and I'm looking forward to joining him on the podium soon!

Check out some pics from Lake Louise....