Last COC of the Season

Training jump in Klingenthal, GER

This past weekend was the last weekend of Continental Cup competitions for Team USA this season. It was located in the town of Klingenthal, GER. The hill is the biggest I have jumped all season, a HS140 so it was a fun jump! At this competition there were a lot of World Cup skiers who did not make their countries World Championship teams. This made for another very competitive field and a fun competition. The first day of competition was another team sprint, which is a two-man team event. I was paired with fellow junior Ben Loomis, we both had pretty good jumps putting us in 11th to start the race. The race is a 1.2km loop and each athlete skis it 5 times tagging off to your teammate in between each lap. We are much younger than most team but we still had fun and skied fairly well ending the day in 15th out of 17 teams. The second day of competition was another individual day and I was able to put down one of the better jumps of my weekend putting me in 26th place to start the race. With this jump I started right in front of a lot of fast skiers so I knew it was going to be a hard but fun race. I was able to ski with a large pack of about 6 skiers for the entire race, which was extremely fun as most of the racers were faster than me. On the last lap I started to feel the fast pace and started to slip behind this group, I was able to stay right behind them but not close enough to fight for the line. I ended up in 33rd position which was fairly good but not what I was hoping for. Overall this competition was very competitive and rather fun as well! If you want to check out the results click here. 

---

The group of skiers I skied most of the race with

I am now back in Planica, Slovenia getting some 1 on 1 training with my coach Martin Bayer and I am happy to report I am improving my jumping every day! Based on how I performed so far this season I have been given the opportunity to travel to the last two World Cups of the season with the US team, which will consist of the Fletcher brothers, Adam Loomis, Ben Berend and myself. I am extremely excited to get this opportunity to see how the ‘big dogs’ get it done. I will be absorbing all the information and experience I can, more updates will come soon with lots of photos as well! 

Warm day for a team sprint