For those of you following this blog, you might have thought today was a race day. It was, sort of... Scott was only permitted to free ski this week, instead of the program proposed by the docs at Park City. Therefore, he never got into the slalom gates with the other guys. Yesterday he worked pretty hard at slalom skiing and ran "virtual" courses in his mind's eye. As a consequence, his race today was the first time through slalom gates since March 6th. He was a little rusty.
He had a better start number than normal, 44, and the snow was decent. The field was a strong one with USST A,B, C and D team members present, plus a host of NCAA Div I guys. Scott skied two solid runs. His timing was a little off and he was pressuring below the gate on the pitch, but it was OK for his first time in Slalom gates for 20 days. He also took advantage of the warm-up gates all day, so this was a good training event. He has another Slalom here at Beaver Creek tomorrow, then it's off to Breckenridge for Super G and Combined. The weather has been cooperating so it looks like a few good races ahead.
For my part, it was a great day. I skied with our great friends, Kent and Heather, who instruct here at Beaver Creek. The inside scoop was that Birds of Prey was groomed last night. Kent and I caught an early chair and were the first ones there. It was covered with 4-6" of fresh snow -- sublime! We capped that off with another 25,000 feet of vertical over the day, in addition to watching Scott's races, eating lunch and having a beer. A great time was had by all!
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