The Olympic season is winding down, which means it’s that strange in-between period—too close to everything to see it clearly, but far enough to start reflecting. The full perspective will come later, but for now I can look back on the final stretch: Garmisch, Courchevel, a quick pivot to Nor-Am finals in Aspen, and Nationals in Panorama.
Following our short break at home after the Games, we returned to Austria to jump back into four days of training—in the rain. We had one week to get prepared for the next races in Garmisch, and I have to admit it can be hard to find the motivation to ski in the rain especially after coming down from a big moment like the Olympics. However, we expected there was a good chance that Garmisch could deliver similar conditions, so we told ourselves it might be the best training we could ask for. Sure enough, the conditions on the Kandahar downhill course were warm and salted for the race week. The track was getting quite rough as the snow melted each day, so it was sure to be a fight to stay in touch with the guys with lower bib numbers. Each of the training runs felt pretty bad in those conditions, but I was feeling decent about the way I was skiing and seeing some promising sector times. I thought I just might be able to get my downhill season back on track after the January struggles, but it all went a little sideways on my race run. There is a turn coming off the top pitch of the course where it’s crucial to take as much speed as possible through the compression and onto a long flat. As I rolled up the ski into that turn, I got bounced and my outside ski tracked away from me momentarily. I managed to wrestle it back under me before hitting the compression, but that split second killed my speed for the whole next sector of the course. I managed to put together some fast splits again on the lower sectors, but it wasn’t enough to salvage a good result and I landed outside the top 30 once again.
The next day we attempted to race super-G, but it was promptly cancelled after we inspected the course in a very thick fog. The Garmisch weekend slipped by quietly with that cancellation, leaving only three more races in Courchevel to make a last-ditch effort at qualifying for World Cup finals. I knew it was a bit of a long shot in downhill, but I had a better chance in super-G with two races left. But before making the ten-hour trip to the French Alps, we decided to take advantage of a speed training opportunity in Saalbach on last year’s World Championship slope. The chance to do some high-quality training with the Austrians, Americans, and Norwegians was simply too good to pass up. We managed to bank two downhill and two super-G days, as well as a quick trip over to the Atomic factory in Altenmarkt to pick up some new gear. We hadn’t taken many rest days since arriving back in Europe, so there was a lot of napping in vans as we made our way to France over the weekend. My only race experience in Courchevel was at the 2023 World Championships when I blew my knee on the landing of the first jump, so I was looking forward to getting redemption on that course. Looking at the forecast for the race week though, I knew we weren’t quite going to have the same icy conditions we had back then…
We were in for another challenging week with warm temps and precipitation in the forecast. They limited us to one training run in order to preserve the course for race day. It was another rough ride with lots of bumps developing in the softer snow. Lots of guys were getting caught in the soft stuff if they went a little too far off the line, leading to some close calls with the nets as they fought to get the direction back.
For my part, I had a fairly clean run going until I entered the traverse onto the final pitch and dove down into the sweeping left hand turn on the steep. It’s a heavy turn that was getting particularly beat up through the week, and somehow my inside ski hooked up on one of the bumps and pitched me outwards. I got knocked down onto the low line and had to fight the slush to stay in the course, which killed my speed for the last two turns. I held on to a couple World Cup points with a 29th place finish, but ultimately it was another result far from where I want to be. I clung to the positives with the hope of still being able to put two good super-G races together, only to have them both get cancelled over the following two days. Just like that, the World Cup season was over. No World Cup finals, just a quick pivot to Aspen Nor-Am finals in search of downhill FIS points instead.
There was no time to process it. The day after the cancellation, we flew from Geneva to Denver and prepared for downhill training the next morning. Aspen was also expecting temps in the high teens each day, so the organizers wanted to run the races as early as possible before the snow began to melt. Thankfully the jet lag helped with the early wake-ups, but unfortunately having no Nor-Am points meant I would be also starting a little further back in the races. People often assume that when you race World Cup, it’s easy to go back to the Nor-Am circuit and cruise to victory, but that just isn’t the case. It’s a totally different game when it comes to the course sets and start order, not to mention all the other athletes who are trying to do the same thing. It was also my first time running a two-run downhill because of the short course length, which I actually felt was a fun new experience. I managed to land a second place finish in the second downhill race, but unfortunately I was too far off the pace to score the FIS points I was looking for. I had no need of super-G points, but decided to do the races anyway in order to test something slightly different with my equipment setup. With no spring training camp planned this year, I figured I would take advantage of the opportunity to get any more mileage.
The final stop of the season was in Panorama, BC, for the National Championships races. It’s been a few years since the schedule worked for our team to be able to attend Nationals, so I was very much looking forward to being there. It’s always fun to end the season at a home resort, and also to have the opportunity to interact with the younger athletes of the club and provincial teams who we rarely get to compete with anymore. My teammates and I had a good battle in the 44-second drag race of a super-G, in which Cam Alexander took the national title by just 0.12 over me. I chose to forerun the races for the rest of the week in order to get more training time, not to mention that I also would have been starting the GS races with a bib in the 120’s. We had very warm weather for most of the races over the last month and a half, but in Panorama the spring skiing vibes were in full effect as the end of the racing season approached. After a long and challenging winter, I was certainly feeling ready and excited for a break.
Now that the season is wrapped up, I’m looking forward to some time to decompress and process it all. With the end of another Olympic cycle, there’s a lot to reflect on—some big highlights, but also goals left unmet. I have a short vacation planned with my girlfriend, and I’m thinking the beach will be a good place to reflect on it all. I’m sure I will do another write-up later this spring to unpack some of those reflections, but I will leave it here for now. Thanks as always for following along with me.
well done !! You are a credit to your family !! andy