Klingenthal, GER - The beginning of a New Year!

Since my last update I have competed in two different weekends of competition on different continents! The first was US Olympic Team Trials in Park City, UT. This event was a winner take all, meaning whoever won the event is guaranteed a spot on the 2018 Olympic Team. The remainder of the team will be named based off of International ranking lists on Jan 22. I did not have my best competition, however it was an incredible experience to have the opportunity to be competing for a spot on a US Olympic Team on home soil. An incredible amount of spectators came out to cheer my teammates and I on. Bryan Fletcher continued his upward trend of results and took the win meaning he is locked in for his second Olympic Games!! Below are some photos from the event!  

After Olympic Trials it was quickly time to pack up my life as I would be flying to Europe in a little over 24hrs for the rest of the season (a 3 month trip). My first stop was Klingenthal, GER for a weekend of Continental Cup competitions. This is one of the biggest hills we get to compete on which makes for a fun jumping portion. We had three days of competition, the first day a 1 jump 5km, second day a 1 jump 10km, and the final day a 1 jump 10km. I had my best competition on day number 1, jumping to 16th place. Due to a cancelled World Cup in Estonia there were more competitors here than normal, 73 athletes in total. I was able to ski a smart race and move up to 14th place on day 1 for my best finish of the weekend. On day 2 I had a mental lapse resulting in a bad jump, setting me to far back to be in contention for the race. My coach and I decided to rest up for day 3 and sit out of the race, a hard pill to swallow but I knew it was the right thing to do. On the final day of competition the wind started to act up causing the jumping to be cancelled, meaning we would be racing of a Provisional Round of jumping that was held earlier in the week. I had jumped to 29th place in that so I would still be starting in an ok position for the race. I had a decent race, not my best of days but enough to hold my own and finish in 27th place. As I am learning more and more, with every competition weekend it is important to take away both the positives and negatives and learn how to improve upon them, this weekend was a great example of that. Below are some photos of the competition weekend, and results are here. 

After the competition in Germany I traveled to Predazzo, Italy where Ben Loomis and I were joined by the Fletcher brothers. We are here for a weekend of World Cup competitions, two individual events and a team event! It will be an exciting weekend in a beautiful valley. If you want to check results or a time schedule click here, you will also be able to watch these events live on the NBC Olympic Channel website here. Stay tuned to my homepage or Social Media for more daily updates!