The ski season officially started on July 1. Many teams started practicing and traveling to Europe for summer and fall training.
Last two years I worked very hard to convince provincial organizations to find the school and place for graduated high school athletes to continue ski races throughout their university years.
The breakthrough came this spring with the University of Calgary. UC Head Coach and a few of us supported the idea the program and Alpine Skiing became a varsity sport. Many Alberta high-level athletes enrolled in the program and they are hoping that this program will become a steppingstone to the National team.
For me, and my program, this is a huge opportunity to keep athletes longer in the sport.
My team grew to 20 athletes. The age group 16 and 17 years old (grade 11 and 12). All athletes are very committed to their academic responsibilities and are trying to do as much as possible training and be ready for ski season. In the Ontario ski community, this group is considered less intense and most of these athletes are written off from high-performance pathways to the National team. All athletes want to go to universities or colleges after they graduate high school but would love to continue ski races. These athletes are very talented, hard-working on and off ski slopes, and their Time Management skills are superb.
The dilemma is how to manage the group and athletes who do not have enough milage in their legs and prepare them to be competitive at regional and local FIS races?
Elite teams already had 5 weeks of ski training and they should be ready to race at the end of November.
In our case, we will need to be careful and strategic when comes down to training and racing. Our first camp will be at Panorama, BS starting Nov 12 for 3 weeks. At the end of the camp, we will have the opportunity to race 6 races. I am torn between the safety of the athletes and the opportunity to score some FIS points, improve the ranking and position themselves for the remainder of the ski season.
I am hoping that 2 weeks of training on the race hill will give the athletes enough time to get used to the hill, equipment and get in race shape. I will approach this race on an individual basis. If I am not comfortable with the athlete’s readiness then we will organize a time trial and only fast ones will race. We also have a limited number of spots to race as the provincial quota for this race is limited to 16 athletes.
I do not want to rush with racing but that is not my nature as I believe racing is the best training you can get. I am sure we will make the right, last-minute decision for training and racing.