Notes from the road: Can forced drills force success?

By Published On: December 9th, 2014Comments Off on Notes from the road: Can forced drills force success?
Ted Ligety with visible stitches post-race in Beaver Creek. GEPA

Ted Ligety with visible stitches at the post-race press conference in Beaver Creek. GEPA

I just returned home to Vermont after spending a month in Colorado – the same month in which every serious ski racer in the world seems to pass through the state. From Frisco to Aspen to Beaver Creek, I had my share of run-ins with both the world’s best athletes (bumping into Kjetil Jansrud at Whole Foods) and those who still aspire to become one (I’m talking about you, Raph). To be honest, it wasn’t all work for SkiRacing.com, and yet somehow it was.

My month started off with coaching: free skiing, drills, and course sets at Loveland with the U14/16 group from Burke Mountain Academy, the same school where U.S. Ski Teamers Mikaela Shiffrin and Nolan Kasper first cut their teeth as true competitors. While some clubs may yield to parental demands for immediate gate training, Burke Headmaster Kirk Dwyer insists on reinforcing fundamentals and focusing on technique in free skiing drills before swan-diving into tactics.

Ski coach or professional van driver?

Ski coach or professional van driver?

There wasn’t nearly as much snow at Loveland this year as in seasons past, and I was challenged in my first week to design a creative enough on-snow curriculum to keep six U14 girls engaged in drills performed repeatedly down a single trail. By the next week, our terrain variety thankfully increased 100 percent with the opening of a second run.

Vail and Aspen were still closed at the time and Copper was quite limited as national and regional and club teams rolled in, begging for any open hill space on which to set a training course. Loveland Ski Club Executive Director John Hale had only four lanes to offer on Switchback, and they had been booked up months in advance.

“This could be the best thing that ever happened to junior ski racing,” I found myself saying. “No parents can complain about how few gates their kids are running out here.”

Loveland Basin in November is always a temporary hotbed for the ski racing community as East and West collide in the closest lodge to the Denver Airport, but this year teams stuck around much longer due to delayed openings elsewhere. The Chair 1 lift line was chock full of notable faces from the NorAm and NCAA circuits with a smattering of World Cup stars to boot. While they patiently waited for training lanes to become available, they performed every variety of free skiing drill imaginable in and around the general public.

Lane assignment boards at Vail.

Lane assignment boards at Vail.

Vail eventually opened and the nightly lane space meetings in the clubhouse resembled a delegation of United Nations representatives with disparate interests. Golden Peak was carved up over four daily sessions, with the hill space assignments sounding more like an international treaty negotiation than simply a place for people to ski.

The girls I coached were grateful enough for what little snow we had at our disposal back at Loveland, and they diligently performed run after run of carving wedge turns, sideslips, railroad tracks, double pole touches, and more. When they finally got into gates at the end of that second week, they were ready to bring their technique into a course with their new focus on tactics.

Neureuther and Schoerghofer together at Vail. GEPA

Neureuther and Schoerghofer together in Vail. GEPA

The same week we got into the gates, Ted Ligety broke his hand on one. Previously, Mr. GS had an error in a crucial spot on course in the World Cup opener in Soelden which cost him a podium spot. I was convinced he would come back to win at home in Beaver Creek, but with an unplanned surgery and only two weeks to recover, I questioned if he could actually pull it off.

When you write about ski races for a living, it can be somewhat exhilarating to be surprised by the results. Although Ligety’s rebound to the top step of the podium at Beaver Creek wasn’t particularly astonishing given his proven ability, it was nonetheless impressive for an athlete on the mend. In Sunday’s post-race press conference, Ligety suggested his injury might have actually played a positive role in securing the victory.

“I was skiing for about a week without a pole just because I couldn’t really move my wrist much. But now it feels fine,” he acknowledged. “I think in a way that was good practice for me, good balance. I’ve skied a lot in the last couple years without poles just as a balance drill, so it wasn’t such an issue. But I think that definitely helped the skiing a little bit as well.”

When Mother Nature or rotten luck forces us to adapt our training plan, it may not always turn out to be such a bad thing.

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About the Author: C.J. Feehan

Christine J. Feehan is a USSA Level 300 coach who spent more than a decade training athletes at U.S. ski academies - Burke, Sugar Bowl, and Killington - before serving as Editor in Chief at Ski Racing Media through 2017. She worked for the FIS on the World Cup tour for three years and then settled into her current home in Oslo, Norway.