Hello all,

First off, let’s talk about the Val D’Isere unused spots. Bode rolled his ankle playing volleyball at the same time as the team captains meeting and made the call to pull out of the race later that night. Since it was after the seed meeting there was no opportunity to change the entry. Tommy, who was there ready to race, ended up missing his start because he was hanging out in the lodge above the start for too long.

The last couple days, Dane and I have been training with the ski team. Before that we jumped into the some FIS GS races in Pampeago, Italy. I was third in one of the races so that was nice. Being on the podium in Italian FIS races is rather difficult so I was happy.

Today Jake Zamasky, Tim Jitloff, Tommy Ford, Dane Spencer, and I (Ted decided not to come up because he was sick) trained four runs of GS. I won three out of four runs and had the fastest time of the day three-tenths ahead of Jitloff. It was a sweet course on a pretty flat partially injected, partially watered hill. It’s a perfect training venue. I won the first two runs, lost the third because I had a bad strategy with my broken pole. The sharp end of my swix pole broke off at some point during my second run and in my third I just couldn’t get any speed out of the gate. Then with a better strategy – using the broken one with my right hand where the snow was a little softer – I won the final run.

I’m pretty exhausted because I put a lot of effort into the last two days of training, but I had a video session and talked to some of the coaches afterwards and they were all excited with my skiing. It definitely felt good to beat up on the ski team guys, but I still don’t have a start in Alta Badia. I am going to email Sasha and start lobbying for a start in Adelboden as it is the last opportunity before they pick the Olympic team.

The next few days, Dane and I will be working for Phil McNichol helping him set up for the World Alpine Rockfest, which is a winner take all 100,000 euro price race and rock concert with 15 of the top world cup guy. We’ll probably be putting up fence and injecting. We’ll find out tomorrow.

The ski team leaves here for Alta Badia tomorrow. It’s been nice to work in with them since they have some great staff member and a full time cook. The food has been epic. Scotty Veenis is the bus driver, which is hilarious. He’s awful entertaining to have around. The ski team rented a full kitchen bus for the next couple months and Adam, the cook, is exceptionally good.

Anyway, hope all is well, w