The last week has been dreadful in the ski racing community. A 16-year old Stratton Mountain School athlete Beckie McGill died free skiing on downhill skis getting ready for speed week at Sugarloaf, ME. It's so tragic to see such an affable, fascinating young lady taken so early in life. Our hearts go out to her family. While in Kitzbuhel, Daniel Albrecht of the Suisse Ski Team crashed off the final jump in downhill training and is in an induced coma. His condition has recently stabilized. Albrecht went down in the same place where Scott Macartney - who blew out his knee last week in Wengen - crashed last year.

As for me, I’m back in the US getting ready to hammer out some dryland and train a couple days of GS in preparation for my next important Nor-Am series. I fly to Calgary in a week.

Our Europe trip turned out to be a whirlwind tour banging out seven races and two days of training in twelve days. I stated off the trip well and ended it well in GS, while I had a couple of good slalom turns somewhere in between. For the last month or so I’ve been struggling in GS to give myself enough room at the gate to arc a good turn on more challenging terrain. My final GS run in Europe – racing at Kirchberg – I picked two gates on the hill to stay away from that entered onto the two most difficult pitches. It’s something I was working on last season in more difficult courses. But either way, I was able to let my skis pull their radius, stay off the gate, or just brush it, and finish the turn without having to slide the top of the turn. It was a great feeling to left Europe with some confidence in GS.

The trip worked out well thanks to Chris Frank, Mike Lyodl, and GMVS. They let us stay in their Koessen house dramatically cutting down on our travel costs.

Hope things are looking up, w