It’s probably difficult for all of you – in the northern hemisphere – to think about skiing right now, but that’s all we’re doing down under. It’s good to be back in the gate. We’ve been racing for the last three days (two in GS and one slalom). The snow is pretty soft on the hurdle where we’re racing. The first day I skied alright, but wasn’t able to follow our plan in the soft snow and ended up finishing 7th.

Yesterday, I was drew 3 so I was able to put together a solid first run before the snow started to break through and was up on the field by half a second. On second run, I took a pretty conservative approach on the top in the soft snow, but was able to put together some good turns on the bottom and hold onto the victory by four tenths. It was nice to pick up an early season win, but I was totally psyched to put together a mediocre second run and still be right in there. On my Atomics last season I really struggled on seconds runs so it felt good to ski not great and still be in there. Either way, when the snow is harder the Heads are really good skis.

Today we raced slalom on the same hill and I ended up blowing out after letting my skis run a little too much during the first run. David Chodounsky put together two solid runs and won.

Anyway, tomorrow we have one more day of slalom, a day off, and three days of training with the US guys on some injection before we fly home for another couple days of summer.

Hope all of you are getting your Olympic fix; we’ve been watching a ton down here. I can't believe there are only three more days. Hope all is well, w