Ramsau COC & Pre World Juniors

Racing in the Ramsau COC

​I am now back in Planica, SLO after our weekend trip to Ramsau, AUT for a weekend of Continental Cup competitions. Ramsau was a winter wonderland as always! It is one of my favorite places to go as it seems like it is a perfect blue-sky winter wonderland everyday! I had a better weekend on the jump hill, which I was excited about, but more than anything I am psyched that with every session I have had on a jump hill the past two weeks I have been making improvements. On Saturday I didn’t have a jump on par with what I have been doing in training but I was close putting me in 34th position to start the race. I had a decent race and was able to move up to 29th position at the end of the race. I was happy to get into the top 30 on the COC again and looking to improve on day two. It started better on the jump hill with a jump that was much closer to where I have been training. I was in 19th place to start the race, which is getting closer to where I want myself to be going into races. I had a good race even though I was starting to feel the fatigue in my legs from the preparation I have been doing for World Junior Championships. Unfortunately I had a pole broken on the 3rd of 4 laps of the race that dropped me off a group I had just caught up to. I was still able to put the hammer down as much as I could and hang on for a decent finish of 23rd place. If you want to check out results from the past weekend click here. I was happy with the weekend as I was able to get into the top 30 on two different days and continue improving to the level of competition that I know I can compete at. The other three juniors (Jared Shumate, Koby Vargas, Stephen Shumann) all got to compete both days in Ramsau and they each performed well!

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Skiing in Ramsau

Jared Shumate (L) and Koby Vargas (R) racing in Ramsau

​I am currently in Planica for several more days of preparation before we leave for World Junior Championships in Rasnov, Romania on Saturday! I am very excited to get to the competition that I have been working for this whole season. I am also very happy to say that Planica has gotten a ton of snow in the past few days and now looks a lot more like the place that I love to come and train! I am also happy to say that the recovery of my hand is coming along great and is looking like it will continue to be manageable enough for me to still compete at my best. We also received some more bad news yesterday, our team van was broken into in the Czech Republic and the majority of our race skis were stolen. We are now in damage control trying to regain what we can in order to have a big enough fleet of skis for World Juniors next week. Thanks to our amazing support from the Nordic Combined community it is looking like we will be able to gather enough skis to get by. Although I didn’t see myself going into World Juniors with a broken hand and no skis I am still optimistic that our team will perform at the best of our abilities! I will update my website again next week before the first competitions with links so that you can check up and see how the team and I are doing! As always thanks for following along and don’t forget to check back next week! 

Another shot from the race in Ramsau