A week in Euroland

After the world cup in Flachau we headed back to the Canadian Home Base of Kirchberg, Austria....and the pouring rain. The next day we trained doing 5 runs in the rain. We were driving up to the top of the hill in an ttempt to stay a little more dry...but we were still soaked. Despite the weather it was good training! The snow was great. Icy and firm!

We then drove to Maribor, Slovenia. My first thought about Slovenia...beautiful and green! The hills are rolling with houses strewn across them. They are built in a different style than the rest of Europe which is kinda refreshing. Though it is very apparent that this country doesn't have the same history of a healthy economy as other European Countries. I'd love to come back and stay a little longer. In our meeting that night it was decided that the slalom girls would drive two and a half hours to Tarvisio, Italy on the GS day in Maribor. So at 7am we loaded into the vans and headed off. Training in Tarvisio was great. Ice and sunny! We did 6 high quality runs and then went for pizza just across the boarder in Kranska Gora, Slovenia. It was probably the best Pizza I've ever had! mmm!!! It is amazing...in the two and a half hour drive we went through three countries...Slovenia, Austria and Italy! And there was no snow within two hours of Maribor. No wonder they couldn't run the race!!! Though it must be said that they did a good job preserving the snow that was there. It just isn't possible at +14 to run a quality race!

That night we had our meeting and I found out some random good news! Apparently after being on injury status your points can only go up by 2% per list for the next 14 lists. So in december everyones points were dropped by 2.3 points...and they went back up in January...only because my points can't go up above 2%..I got to keep my good points!! So I went from being ranked 69th in the world to 48th! Nice!! So for the slalom in Maribor my bib was supposed to be 41. I big improvement from 55 at Flachau. I was very excited to race and take advantage of the great start number!

We arrived at the hill in Maribor to mixed sun and cloud and people boot walking down the course followed by two teams of volunteers with hoses watering the course followed by people slipping the course and finally buckets of salt being thrown down. They were trying everything to get the race off!! I have never seen anything like that the morning of the race before!! We arrived at the top of the warm-up course to the news that it was already cancelled. We did two runs in the warm-up course anyway. Then we got to run the race course from the pitch down. It was great to try out the hill even if we didnt get to race it! I love the hill and can't wait to do it next year (hopefully). The snow, however, on the race hill was completely rotten...as we skied down the course gates flew out and it was super crystally snow.

So we went back to the hotel and packed up. We are now back in Tarvisio, Italy for a Europa Cup slalom tomorrow. Really looking forward to it!