Race Reruns

Today in women’s giant slalom Lyndsey Vonn wiped it out and Julia Mancuso was on course and above Lindsey. Well, you may have seen it, Lyndsey wiped out and ran into the fence and Julia Mancuso was yellow flagged and had to stop her race and start over.

Reruns stink!

While I am not even close to the level of skiing we are watching at the Olymics I do race and ski gates. The resort sets its course, a certified skier then skis the course and sets the pace. You earn a medal based on your age and time. As long as your time is good enough you earn a medal and you are not competing directly with others. However, we all know how that works! Certainly our NASTAR finishes figure in our banter with each other.

We are talking with total times ranging from 19 seconds to 30 seconds depending on the snow and how the gates are set. The run my usual resort sets this on, would probably be viewed as a green circle run by Olympic skiers. It has good pitch but it is not very long, still I hear reports skiers can hit 50 MPH on this run.

I recall one race a few years ago. I was having a good run I attacked the start, I was making the gates with clean carves and was very happy with the results. I skied to the light and was summoned into the race administrator’s office.

Some … skied through the light in front of me. Now, I am sure race officials do not like it when people jump into the course but of that I could care less. However, do not ski through the stop gate when jumping a course! When I jump a course, I ski out before reaching the stopgate. Also, if I can see someone is on course then I do not enter it.

I had to go back up and rerun the race. Unfortunately, I was unable to recover the magic I had on the first run. I can not recall if I got a bronze or blanked out, none-the-less I was not happy.

While the below is not going to happen on the course I run here is what can happen if you enter a world-cup caliber ski race course: