All,
Here is the latest news:
This Weekend
This is the busiest adult race weekend of the season at Craigleith. The GDHL Super G is on Saturday morning. For those who are new to the GDHL, I think this is the best race of the year. It is an opportunity to ski as fast as you can down Partridge on what is normally a very smooth and well prepared course. I am attaching Mark Reidl's e-mail concerning course inspection etc. for those who may not have received it. I expect that Allan will be in the start area around 9 AM when inspection starts and that he will be happy to have you join him for inspection. The GDHL race on Sunday is also on Partridge, but is a slalom. This will be an endurance contest and times are likely to be widely spread from first to last. Let me know what place you think will be closest to 10 seconds slower than the winning time. Honourable mention in next week's bulletin will go to the best guess.
As both mornings are taken up with GDHL races, we will be training in the afternoons, starting at 1 PM. On Saturday, we are on Big John. On Sunday, we are on Venture. We are training slalom both afternoons. Other groups are using these hills until 12:30 PM, so it will be a bit of a scramble for us to reset for 1 PM. Please come to do some slipping while we finish setting.
As most of you know, Carrie injured her knee while skiing at the Alpine Ontario event last Saturday evening. She will not be on skis this weekend but has promised to coach from the bottom of the hill and make up in volume for what she lacks in mobility.
Friday Training
Tomorrow's training is slalom on Venture. Unfortunately, Matt DiStefano is unable to coach as scheduled. A replacement is being organized. Next Friday's training is also slalom. Dan Hadley will be coaching.
GDHL Results
In the first slalom of the season, two weekends ago, James McLeod, Allan LaChance, Peter Rockandel, JF Courville, Trent Winstone and Ian Latimer finished 5th through 10th, respectively, with the JF beating his ranking by 21 places. The upwardly mobile (beating their rankings by at least 10 places) also included Chris Fregren, Jeff Craig, Peter Copp, Kevin Hillock, Chris Clarke, Rob Burnes, Rob McAdam (plus 28), Mark Reidl, Ron Statler, Margaret Isberg, Ray Murakami, Byron Darlison (plus 24), Katie Worndl (plus 25.5, by virtue of being ranked 70.5), Warren Finlay, Mark and David Arthur, Annie Haldimand-Tait, Craig Harrison, Elspeth Gaukrodger (plus 23) and Morley Forsyth. The standards for honourable mention will have to be raised if program participants continue to dominate the GDHL this way!
Note that, with Carrie's injury, Margaret Isberg jumps into the lead for the overall women's championship in the GDHL. Katie Worndl is not far behind, despite skiing in bib 97.
World Cup
The Hahnenkahm was a bit of a disappointment last weekend and other races would not likely have been run in the conditions that prevailed. Nonetheless, I extracted some interesting comparisons from the detailed FIS analysis of the race. Didier Cuche won by 0.24 seconds. The next seven finishers were all within 0.24 seconds of each other. Cuche was fastest through the first interval, which was only about 15 seconds, but was then 28th fastest through the second interval. He won the race in the fourth and final interval, in which he was again the fastest skier. The second and fourth place finishers overall each lost almost half a second over about 22 seconds in that interval. Jan Hudec, who was only 0.01 seconds behind going into the last segment, lost 0.57 seconds. This seems more remarkable because Cuche was only 50th fastest in the speed trap, which I recall was set about the same place as the beginning of the last segment. His speed was 124.8 kph, while the next slowest top 10 finisher was 128.4. I'm not sure what the lessons from all this are, except that the man can hold a tuck better than anyone in the world and if more of you buy watches for training, we will be able to afford interval timing as well!
I couldn't find video of the race, but here is an interesting historical overview from the CBC:
http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Sports/CBC_Sports_Weekend/1237566491/ID=2189531410
Fashion News
Carrie's Saturday outfit consisted of the Posh jacket with white pants. Posh is the model, not the color, which was fuchsia. Carrie says Posh is a 2012 model and that for 2013 fuchsia and white will have much more imaginative names like peat, heat and pout, which have been featured on previous weekends.
Carrie promises that, coming soon to a store near you will be a new speed suit for the MAMIL (middle-aged men in Lycra) demographic. It will feature a longer zipper in front, special compression panels in the midsection (some available by prescription only) and stealth technology that will conceal the wearer from casual bystanders, who would otherwise be distressed by the sight!
How to Start a Fight (No. 2)
My wife and I were sitting at a table at her high school reunion, and she kept staring at a drunken man swigging his drink as he sat alone at a nearby table.
I asked her, "Do you know him?"
"Yes", she sighed, "He's my old boyfriend. I understand he took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear he hasn't been sober since."
"My God!" I said, "Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?"
And then the fight started...
Good luck on the weekend!
JWM