SKIING NEWS ITEM

Women Speed, Tech Skiers Mesh in NZ

WEDNESDAY, 30 AUGUST 2006

QUEENSTOWN, N.Z. (Aug. 29) - Good snow, great ski area support and over-the-moon enthusiasm from athletes, who hadn't skied since spring, helped make the U.S. alpine women's training camp at Coronet Peak "outstanding," according to Head Coach Patrick Riml.

The long layoff from on-snow training helped boost the excitement level, as did the presence of World Cup speed skiers joining the World Cup tech group. In the next camp, the traditional September camp in Portillo, Chile, the World Cup slalom and GS skiers will join the downhillers.

"It was a fun camp. If you don't ski in May, June and July, you get a little nervous because if that first camp in August doesn't work out with the weather, or the snow, you have to make-up some things and it could be a big headache," said Riml. "But this was fine...and after the long break, the women were fired-up.

"It was really good to see them being so hungry. They showed me some fire out there."

Jessica Kelley (Starksboro, VT), two-time NorAm giant slalom champion, echoed her coach. "It was good, a really good camp," she said. "We got a couple of storms, so we had lots of good training. We started slowly, free-skiing and then doing some drills because we hadn't skied in so long, and then GS...and then we had a lot of slalom at the end."

Kelley: cross-pollination works
She likes the idea of the intra-team training, the cross-pollination of gate-runners and the speed merchants. "Well do it again down in Chile next month, and that should be good again."

"As usual, Coronet Peak's Race Department gave us such great support with grooming and everything else," Riml said. New Tech Head Coach Chris Knight agreed, adding, "We had perfect snow, a natural injection, if you will, and it froze and became so hard, harder than a regular injection [of water to freeze the snow, creating harder, faster conditions]...but then we got a storm with about 25cm (nearly 10 inches), so that changed it...but we still had great conditions. We got quite a lot done."

Riml said the group included five speed skiers - Kirsten Clark (Raymond, ME), Stacey Cook (Truckee, CA), Libby Ludlow (Bellevue, WA) Lindsey Kildow (Vail, CO) and Bryna McCarty (Concord, VT) - and a half-dozen slalom/GS athletes: Kelley, Lauren Ross (Stowe, VT), Caitlin Ciccone (Bethlehem, NH), Resi Stiegler (Jackson Hole, WY), Katie Hitchcock (Sugar Bowl, CA) and Kaylin Richardon (Burnsville, MN).

The long off-snow break "was really good because it enabled the girls to build an aerobic base [with dryland training] and we were able to take up to 10 runs of slalom every day," he said. "They never got tired on the hill, and we'd be taking four or five runs in the first session, re-set [the gates] and take four or five more, and it never affected the next day's performance. We had all smiles throughout the camp...pretty extraordinary."

In two giant slaloms against largely non-World Cup competition, Kildow - "she's skiing so fast in GS and is in great condition," Knight said - and Clark went 1-2 each day. Stiegler won the lone slalom she raced in by seven seconds.

Stiegler, Kildow, Ciccone skiing fast
Stiegler also drew high marks for her conditioning and, as Knight said, "her position on her skis. Same as Lindsey, she's got that good position on her skis, and that's already showing in her speed skiing."

Ciccone, the reigning U.S. GS champion, "carried the momentum from winning that national title," Knight said. "She came in already right up to speed in GS and in slalom, right there with Lindsey in the race, especially right there with Resi in slalom. Caitlin was super enthusiastic and skiing very aggressively."

The Chile camp will feature speed training for the tech group, "but we'll have tech sessions every day after speed sessions. We'll run slalom the first week, GS the second. It's really good working together like this because the coaches kinda get on the same page, and we know what everyone's doing. Some of the girls don't want to be slalom skiers, or don't want to be downhillers...but the benefits of this kind of training are so huge...

"We'll work on some other stuff while we're training with them, and the change of scenery is good...and I think the speed girls liked this change of scenery, too," Knight said.

"We want to keep both teams together in New Zealand and South America. GS is something we need to work on as a group, and two weeks of speed training will help their GS side, get the girls used to going fast again."

This article was originally posted at the US Ski Team's website at www.usskiteam.com.

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