We woke up to a cold drizzle with very limited visibility. On the drive to the mountain, we called James Lazor, the race organizer, to find out it was postponed an hour. Half way up the 10 minutes access road the rain turned to snow and chains were necessary for 2 wheel drive traffic. Luckily, we are on Jon’s budget for a rental car so we have a brand new Outback that rallied right up the slick road.

The weather was a concern all day. The snow, fog, and rain was constantly fluctuating. One minute it’s dumping the next it’s bluebird so it was a challenging day. I drew bib 1 and pretty much knew I was going to kill it. The snow was grippy in a few sections and soft in others. Nil, the New Zealand coach, set a really turny, slow course since we were most likely going to be racing in the fog so I had an even bigger advantage starting 1. With pretty soft snow and a turny course you can really cut off the line and start digging a mean rut for the rest of field. First run, I had a killer run. The sun was out and the snow was perfect. I love starting bib 1 – it can be so fun and easy. And at about bib 8 the weather started moving back in so I was at the bottom just chuckling.

Second run, was essentially the same course just adjusted around a couple ruts and holes. I was up top watching a few guys and saw some pretty bad skiing. And just before I pushed out of the fog started rolling it. I couldn’t get on course early enough. On the third gate which is the second turn on a pretty steep pitch, I dropped into a hole and quickly realized why everyone I watched looked so bad at the third gate. I struggled down the pitch in the flat light, let my skis run onto the flat, and held on for the victory. My second run wasn’t all that fast so I really didn’t expect another personal best result. When the news came through in the late afternoon that the penalty got down to 6.00; I was ecstatic. I am currently ranked 2nd in the U.S. and will soon be ranked 31st in the world!!!!! Heck yeah!!!
The last few days have been pretty sweet for Team TNT (Team Team No Team). We thought having an extra team at the beginning would be a nice addition kinda like American Dodgeball Association of America. Jon won the Nationals GS the other day here at Coronet. He scored a career best 10.94 and Dave Chodounsky won the ANC slalom on Thursday and scored a 6.00.
Sean McKenna, our coach down here, and I went out on the town last night with Jimbo Arnott, Johnny Davidson, Patty Biggs, and a bunch of other people on a pretty entertaining pub crawl. I woke up this morning without any knowledge of the 7.1 earthquake at 4:30 AM this morning. Apparently, it wasn’t very intense here. There is no damage in Queenstown, which is somewhat surprising only 300 miles from the epicenter.

We have a few more days here in Queenstown before we head up to Mt. Hutt for the final ANC races next week. Hope all is well. w