It was just a little mid-week Europa Cup at Obereggen, Italy. Well, not so little, really. A staple of the EC schedule the race is utilized annually by World Cup skiers looking to warm up for the GS test at nearby Alta Badia. When the dust settled, sitting in second place, nestled between Swede Andre Myhrer and Canadian medalist Michael Janyk, was 20 year old Will Gregorak. Except that Myhrer started 17th and Janyk 19th. Gregorak started 72nd.

“I’m kind of just awestruck from how far back I started,” Gregorak said. “My only goal was to have a solid first run and maybe get into the top 30 and manage to have a good run from there, so it exceeded all my expectations by far.”

And everyone else’s.

“It was a super competitive race,” said US EC coach Ben Black. “The way it works in Europa Cup is that the top 15 are determined by Europa Cup points and then they put in all the World Cup guys. … It was a very, very deep field.”

In deed, Olympic slalom champ Giuliano Razzoli was in there (finished sixth) as well as Jaynk who won bronze in slalom at the last World Championship. Despite more than 100 starters, the track held up amazingly well.

“It was fully injected,” said Black. “It was sweet and they hammered. It was awesome.”

In addition to Gregorak’s effort – which netted him roughly $1,300 in Christmas spending money – David Chodounsky got fifth from the 44th start.

Gregorak image by GEPA