Winter Park camp gives U.S. freestyle team an early season boost

By Published On: November 28th, 2005Comments Off on Winter Park camp gives U.S. freestyle team an early season boost

Winter Park camp gives U.S. freestyle team an early season boost{mosimage}WINTER PARK, Colo. — U.S. moguls skiers took a day off Sunday as they rolled through their final preseason training camp, high-up and low-down at Winter Park, which has hosted the ski team for many final camps.

“It’s been a good camp. It’s so good to get back on snow,” said Donnie St. Pierre, moguls head coach. “We’ve got snow and if you look at European Web sites, they don’t, so we’re very glad to be home at this point. There’s no snow in Tignes [France — the next World Cup stop Dec. 13], so you know it’s going to be solid as a rock” on machinemade snow.

“Here, we’ve got a variety of terrain — on Bash, up at the top of Winter Park, and then, starting Monday, we’ll have three straight days on Ambush, which is right at the base, that slope that you see when you pull in here … and then when they host some regional moguls contest Friday, we can move back to the upper course, although some of our skiers may forerun the regional event, some of them may even ski in it,” he said.

“Either way, it’s all coming together for us. It’s just so nice to come back here, the support that Winter Park provides for moguls skiing is, really, just over the top — the hours and hours of ‘cat time to groom and move snow, the thousands — maybe millions — of gallons of water in snowmaking so we have courses…”

The on-snow conditions are excellent for skiers getting back to training after a successful camp in late summer in Chile. Some athletes got some extra training by going to Zermatt, Switzerland, he said, “but for those who haven’t been on snow for a couple of months, this is perfect. It gets their muscles firing in a way that’s hard to reach in a gym setting.”

The day off was well-deserved, he said. “We’ve gone pretty hard the last few days and everybody was pretty much ready for a day off.”

While all the athletes were pushing to up their skills, St. Pierre said he was particularly pleased with the comeback by 2002 Olympic silver medalist Shannon Bahrke, who missed the last half of the 2004 season with a fractured jaw and then was out most of last winter with torn knee ligaments in her right knee, suffered during training last January at Mont Tremblant, Quebec.

“She needs time on skis and she’s getting it, doing the bumps and then jumps and everything,” the coach said. “Her confidence climbs every day but she knows she needs more time skiing after being out. Her knee’s fine, she’s the Energizer Bunny, got that signature smile and high energy, so it’s great to have Shannon back.”

The camp will go until Dec. 5, St. Pierre said, and 13 athletes will head to France a few days later. Tignes is the opening site with Oberstdorf, Germany, which has been pelted in recent storms, the second stop on the schedule, Dec. 18.

– Courtesy USSA News Bureau

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