Post World Junior Championships

Nordic Combined World Junior Team 2014

World Junior Championships has come to an end and I am very excited how I did and performed. I gained a lot of experience and improved a lot in my competition routines. On Thursday we had the first individual comp which I got 34th in, skiing up from 42nd place. On that day we did a 10km race and I had the 25th fastest time which I was very excited about. On Friday we had the day off for recovery and a small break before the competitions on the weekend. Last year at World Juniors I only competed in one event the 10km individual and got 51st place and the 50th fastest time. As far as improvement I am very psyched with how I did.  On Saturday we had the second Individual competition which was a 5km race. I did not have a very good jump in this comp but I ended up pretty close to where I started in the first comp. I jumped to 48th place right behind teammate Erik Lynch who jumped to 47th. The course that we skied in Predazzo is extremely hard with lots of hills both steep, long and gradual. I had an okay race this day, I ended up following a Slovenian racer up to my teammate whom then jumped in my draft and the three of us skied up the field together.  As this race was much shorter I wasn’t able to move up as far as I would have liked to but I still had a good race. On the last hill of the last lap I made my move past another skier we had joined and Erik stuck with me as we dropped the other two racers over the top of the hill. On the final stretch Erik out sprinted me for 43rd place and I ended the day in 44th place which I was happy with. Overall this day I felt both bummed with my jumping but still psyched with race. You can check out the official results from today here.

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Fireworks at Opening Cermony

The next day was the team event, representing USA was myself, Ben Berend, Aleck Gantick, and Erik Lynch. I was the first person to jump and after the first round USA was in 6th place, I was very happy with this jump, it was one of my best at this competition. Our next jumper was Ben Berend who jumped us into 4th place. After jumping we ended in 6th place 1min 20sec back from the leader. The race was very hard even though it was only a 5km race, my legs were extremely tired for the entire race. After my leg we were in 8th place as some of the faster skiers from other teams were sent in the first heat as well. We ended up skiing to 9th place overall which was a little disappointing, however we were all very tired and sore from the entire weekend. Overall this event was very fun and a great experience, I really enjoyed skiing all three events at World Junior Championships and I was exhausted at the end of the weekend. If you would like to look at any of the results front this competition you can check them out here.

On the way to our European home in Planica, Slovenia we had to take detours due to passes being closed which took us very close to the city of Venice, Italy and some of my older teammates convinced my coach to let us have lunch there and explore the town for a while. Below are some pictures of our fun adventure in the floating city.

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Venice, Italy