Well this has been an interesting trip so far. Another year and Mother Nature hasn't been kind to the ski slopes...or maybe it was the resort, don't know for sure. We are at Gore Mountain, NY for a NorAm race but didn't see much snow on the drive up from Virginia and while the mountain has snow there hasn't been enough for course building.
We got here yesterday for the training day. Whitney got to catch up briefly with her friend who does ski cross and went to the Youth Olympics and has been rocking it. He's doing great! They both were on the team at Massanutten way back when. She met up with her coach and the group went out for a modified practice. When we got here they hadn't finished building the course and were told they'd be able to run the start and down through turn three. By the time she went out they were only letting them do the start. Not an ideal way to practice for your first race of the season. She was very excited though because when she first saw the start she was a bit intimidated but she nailed it the first time she went through.
Yesterday they did some free riding, ran through what they could of the course a few times, and called it a day. Whitney texted KC (her coach) to confirm things for this morning and at the time he was still in the coaches meeting. These meetings are usually pretty short, they confirm the riders and go over a few details for race day. This time because of the course build issues they had a very long meeting to try to figure things out and how they could fit in two races. We heard they tossed around some options, one they decided on they couldn't do because it violated ski cross regulations, so they talked more. The original plan for today was to have practice, seed everyone based on their FIS points (would likely would have put Whitney last) and build the brackets from there.
When we got here today the course looked built and I was happy because it comes down to the bottom of the mountain. Whitney said that it was really long, which it looks. When we checked in though KC said that there would be no racing today and we got the official word shortly after that. They looked over the course and decided that it was too soft and unsafe for riders today. It's supposed to be cold tonight so tomorrow is looking good, hopefully. They are getting in some practice time; I don't know how much is on course and how much is just riding the mountain or looking at the course from the outside.
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