I returned from the USASA Nationals earlier this week. Just Whitney and I were able to go this year but we had a good time. Her coach from Massanutten was there and we were able to get his help for Whitney during her practice time and race. This year it was a quick trip, out to Colorado on Friday and home on Monday due to Whitney being in college and her class schedule.
While there's many flights from here to Denver, it's hard to get from Portland to Denver. I timed my flight to get there about when Whitney was arriving. We got her stuff then waited for the shuttle to take us to Copper. Unfortunately we didn't get there in time for Whitney to register Friday night. We checked in to our room then went down to get some awesome pizza.
Saturday dawned bright and sunny. We went to get Whitney registered where she met up with one of the boys from the Massanutten team that was out there. One of the things we had to deal with at registration was deciding if Whitney should stay in open class or move "up" to race USSA/FIS. Whitney decided to stay in open class for this year and next year she'll move to USSA/FIS. After we took care of that, she hit the slopes with some of the guys from Massanutten.
She had her practice time around lunch time and that's when things got interesting. The first part of the course was challenging with a steep drop into a wu tang, another drop to a table top, then down into a curve and out of sight from the start area. Towards the end of the practice time I got a message from her that she crashed, ripped a binding off her board, they had to call ski patrol, but she was fine. Not exactly the message a mom at the bottom of the slopes wants to get. She and Chad came down and we swung by the NeverSummer tent and had them look at her board. They were a bit mystified but the later consensus was that her bindings were just thick enough that she needed slightly longer bolts to hold them onto the board. It seems she put just enough pressure, at the right angle that she was able to pull the binding right off the board without doing any damage to the board itself; she just stripped the last bit of the bolts.
She got in one more practice run after the crash, but it was on Chad's board. She's ridden it before but his stance is slightly wider than hers so it wasn't as good a ride as she would have liked. She was a bit discouraged after practice, not being able to get in a clean run. The group from Massanutten got together after a lunch break and rode for a couple of hours, partly practice, partly fun. Whitney really enjoyed hanging out with them again.
Sunday was a beautiful day. Whitney was up and out the door early to meet Chad. I went out a bit later, after the lifts opened to the public and went up to the easy slopes. I was planning on taking a couple of runs before I went over to meet her but wow, not being on skis much this winter was a huge problem. My legs were so tired and not ready to do so much skiing. I took one run then went over to the boardercross course.
It was interesting this year. The atmosphere in the waiting area was so different than in past years. There were fewer competitors, only a few had coaches (a few of the FIS racers and a few of the open class racers had coaches with them), and they were all older. There were at least two Olympians there racing, plenty of racers at a high level. We knew from registration that it was just going to be Whitney and one other racer in open class; there were 13 in the women's FIS race.
Time trials were first and Whitney did well. She got her confidence back during the morning's practice runs and she was the faster of the two in open class. After that it was a long wait since they ran the first races of the FIS men, FIS women, and open class men before they ran open class women. I had a pretty good view from the top of the course, but from a video I saw today I should have been on the other side and down a little, from there you could see the whole course.
Since it was just two of them in the open class they were doing best two out of three races. The first race around the first big curve Whitney caught an edge, did a spin move, and lost speed. She wasn't quite able to catch up and came in second. The second race, Whitney had a great start and was ahead as far as we could see down the course. We were confident that she was going to have a third race. What we couldn't see was a bit of a dust up that cost her the race. The other girl was trying to pass her and clipped the edge of Whitney's board. They both went down but the other girl was up faster (her board was on top) and Whitney just couldn't catch her. It was a great race and it was just something that happens in boardercross. The other girl did apologize several times to Whitney and also said that she didn't like to win that way. Very nice of her but it still took Whitney a while to cool down, she was pretty pissed off.
A couple of high points - while she didn't get to talk to him Whitney saw Alex Diebold. She said that every time she was heading over to talk to him someone else came up before she could get there. She was so disappointed last year when he was there and gave out the awards that she didn't get to meet him. Worse was that we passed him (by himself) walking down by the shops and she didn't talk to him then. There's always next year. This year they had Lindsey Jacobellis handing out the awards for the open class and FIS racers. While Whitney isn't a fan of her, I still think it's pretty cool that she got her medal from an Olympic racer. She gave great advice, too, be careful with the medal around your teeth and don't chip any.
Overall it was a great weekend. Not exactly the results Whitney wanted but after the challenges of the course, the epic crash, loss of confidence, it was good. We both would have liked to stay out there longer, especially since they got 7" of snow the day after we left. There's always next year (and I'm definitely planning on hitting the slopes more).
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