Marshall's plan includes indoor slalom training

WITTENBERG, Germany — Who said it doesn't snow indoors. For U.S. Ski Teamers Cody Marshall and Tim Kelley, getting ready for one of the first Europa Cup slaloms of the season meant spending some time training at an indoor skiing facility in Wittenberg, Germany.

WITTENBERG, Germany — Who said it doesn't snow indoors. For U.S. Ski Teamers Cody Marshall and Tim Kelley, getting ready for one of the first Europa Cup slaloms of the season meant spending some time training at an indoor skiing facility in Wittenberg, Germany.
    "We slept at the same place we skied, you can't beat that," says Marshall, who had a breakout World Cup season last winter, scoring slalom points in the World Cup slalom races at both Wengen and Zagreb. "It's like a hockey rink with a pitch and it's absolutely perfect for practicing ways to find speed on flat sections."
    Paul McDonald joined Marshall and Kelley at the Snow Funpark for training that will simulate race conditions for an indoor Europa Cup slalom scheduled for Nov. 6 at Landgraaf, The Netherlands. At 330 meters in length, the Snow Funpark slope could accommodate about 20 gates per set and the guys got in a lot of practice time.
    "You can't create this kind of snow outside. It's around 22 seconds per run, so you get a lot of chances to work on your technique," Marshall says. "Our coaches Tom Sell and Pete Korfiatis have helped us out a ton and we've been pushing each other pretty hard. It's funny to say, but it's been a really good session and none of it was outside."
    For Marshall, the measure of good slalom training is based upon the number of broken gates tallied at the end of the week.
    "We broke a lot gates. I feel kind of bad about that, but if you want to be fast, you've got to hit them hard," he says.
    Marshall enters his third season on the World Cup carrying the momentum of a breakthrough year highlighted by a 19th-place finish in Wengen on a day where the first run was held in blinding snow and the second in rain. Following the Europa Cup in Landgraaf on Nov. 6, Marshall will head to Levi, Finland, for the first World Cup slalom on Nov. 16.
    "I'm really psyched for Levi. I was pumped to go there last year, but it was moved to Reiteralm [Austria] because there wasn't enough snow in Finland," Marshall says. "Hopefully it will go off this year. I gained some really good experience on the World Cup last year and I'm really fired up to get on it this winter."
    The men's World Cup season opens Oct. 25 with a giant slalom in Sölden, Austria.

    — U.S. Ski Team release