Hello all,

So over the last two month I’ve been all over the place. Maybe I should back up a bit. A few days before the end of the camp in Norway, I pulled Jon aside – who had recently signed with Kanel 5 on Swedish national television for a four-episode reality show – to tell him how important his TV show was for his career and how it should be a higher priority. He was planning on sending all of his videoblogs to a director who was going to compile it and call it a TV show. I thought that was a terrible idea. Not to mention, the director quit a few days earlier. I gave him a few ideas the main one was having a bunch of couch scene similar to the show “Modern Family” to explain things and bring in some humor.

He totally agreed and at the end of the day, he asked me if I wanted to be the director/co-producer of the show. After thinking about it for a few hours, I decided it would be a neat and different opportunity. I’ve been focusing entirely on skiing for five years and it was so much fun to work on something entirely different. So I spent just over two weeks in Sweden filming, playing in a Swedish celebrity volleyball tournament, doing some dryland training, and a bit of partying. We did one episode in Norway, one in Sweden, and we were planning on doing two down here in New Zealand. One of racing and one of jumping after all the racing is over. However, building a jump down here is looking less and less likely, but hopefully something will work out a Treble Cone. We’re living in Queenstown rather than Wanaka since there are so many races down here and more injection snow/ice to ski on.


This morning started with me forgetting both my bib and ticket. Damn it. Last night, I packed everything for today putting my bib, wallet, and ticket into my Kjus jacket. In the morning, I decided to wear my Treble Cone Race Academy (TCRA) jacket – I had from a couple years ago – to try to make Guenther smile. Guenther is the director at TCRA and we’ve been trying to track him down all week without any response. So I had to argue my way thru getting a second comp ticket and a new bib. My old coach Mark Godomsky once told me that whenever there is unforeseen drama on race day I perform better. At US Nationals when I was 4th in the slalom in 2004, I left my boots at the mountain the night before and was freaking out about all night before the race. The first Nor-Am I won I almost got my ticket pulled for skiing down the wrong trail during warm-up in the morning. So today I forgot a few things that really didn’t matter and I made a few good turns in warm up and felt like I could win.

Yesterday, I trained some GS with the US Europa Cup Team, which is basically last year’s Development team and skied terribly. I was definitely sucking. After training I took a couple runs with Bill Doble, the Dodge Ski Boot CEO/technician, and made a few adjustments on my boots, which felt really good.

First run, started 12th behind Bode wearing bib number 59. Haha kinda hilarious. I skied well up top and had a decent bottom. I crossed the finish line and crashed into the finish fence – the finish corral was painfully small. I looked at the scoreboard and saw I was in second two-hundredths behind Bode and a couple tenths ahead of Ted, Jon, and Felix. Jon ended up racing, which was super impressive seeing how his back still looked like a right footed turn. In between runs I gave both Jon’s and my skis a layer of Podium additive (rub on wax) and chilled out. The second run was a bit more turny and I knew that it would be challenging to win. However, this year is really about letting go and not worry about anything so I decided I didn’t really care.

So I pushed out of the gate, snapped off a couple good turns, and struggled some on the upper section. The snow wasn’t holding up very well, but I just tried to keep it together. I was switching my edges too early in a couple places and wasn’t being patient enough. I crossed the line and moved into the lead two-hundredths ahead of Ted. Bode came down and made a mistake/shutter down across the finish line. I gave him a big high five, thanked him, and walked away with the best result of my career. The best possible point race you can score outside of world cup competition, a 6-point race. It feels great; but frankly, it’s a little weird that I’m not more fired up. I dreamed of scoring a 6 for years. As Sean McKenna, a great buddy of mine and our ski coach down under, explained, “Maybe you’re just at peace with skiing.”

Today was definitely an epic day at Coronet Peak.


Hope you’re all doing well. w