It has been pleasant to compose this without the pressure of having to announce something before it happens. Among other things, I have been able to mull over at leisure continuing to razz Jeff S. about missing the Interclub finals.
Club Championships
As always, the Club Championships brought out a slightly different field from GDHL and Interclub and some new faces rose to the occasion. Results are here. Double gold medalists included Doreen Davenport, Jack and Cathy Weingust, George Hayhurst, Anne Mathers, Allan LaChance, Margaret Isberg, Jeff Sutherland (who didn't lose everything with his week off), Leslie Morgan, Tracy Britnell, Greg Cavers, Kate Veer, Jennifer Callow, James Callow (two of the many Callows in the starting gate), Paul Atkinson, Devon Clarke and Doug Jarvis. Overall champions were Paul Atkinson and Devon Clarke, with Leslie Morgan and Jeff Sutherland taking the senior titles.
Good to see Doreen back racing!
Among other highlights, Milan Popadich showed fine form in racing to the second fastest combined time in the very deep men's 55 to 59 group despite an absence from racing and training this year. Rob Bruce had a stellar GS run to claim bronze and join the still prestigious "I beat Al once" club, while Rob Burnes and Trent Winstone went 1, 2 in the 50 to 54 group and joined the "I beat Jeff" club.
Trent Winstone, Rob Burnes and Craig Shibley on the 50 to 54 GS podium
It was fun to watch Paul Atkinson, Chris Barber and Devon Clarke skiing SL on the weekend. Like jumping back and forth from trampoline to trampoline all the way down the hill. But you have to make sure that your upper body is leading the way, not popping up. Devon also participated in Sunday's closing adult gate training Dual SL and was looking like a winner as she vanquished all comers. (Devon didn't let a seeding system that was less formal than March Madness put her off.) Jeff Sutherland was looking like the other finalist, putting his usual energy into many successful match-ups. However, Jeff had handicapped himself by skiing on his GS skis and is never one to pace himself through the many opportunities to run the course. In the semis against the sneaky fast descendant of L. Patten (aka Jerry Maguire), Jeff took the first round, but may have forgotten the maxim about keeping the upper body ahead of the momentum and as he approached the finish line in what appeared to be a winning second run, he blasted off like a Saturn rocket and returned to earth on his back without the benefit of parachute deployment, leaving Jerry to proceed to the final at his leisure. Jerry then played the pity card in his first run against Devon, convincing Jacques that a giving him a two gate head start in the second run would make for a closer finish. As it turned out, Devon was a bit slow out of the start on the second run, giving Jerry almost three gates, and Jerry hung on to claim the title.
Chris Barber and Paul Atkinson in their winning SL suits.
Sponsors
We are very fortunate to have a great group of sponsors for GDHL and I have been tardy in recognizing them this year. Their contributions ensure that we have a financial cushion with which to operate, and enable us to often be in a position to make a contribution on behalf of the GDHL to the Club's capital investments in racing. Their logos and links to their websites adorn our newsletter and website and we hope you'll reciprocate the support that they've shown us.
Budget Propane is a family business operating from Gravenhurst, Muskoka, Haliburton and elsewhere in central Ontario. The patriarch has asked that he not be identified in this forum, but he and his family and embraced and supported ski racing at Craigleith in an epic way, and I trust that those of you who know him with thank him in person.
Pratte International is headed by Michel Pratte, a past national team racer and coach, who has developed an outstanding approach to running race camps over many years. Many GDHL racers have benefited from Michel's camps in Zermatt, Whistler, Copper Mountain, Sun Peaks and elsewhere. He has a large team of coaches to call on, including our own Jacques Reid. The camps are not only great training, but great fun, and well worth a visit.
Squire John's has been a long-time supporter of GDHL and many other things at Craigleith. They are the "go to" source of race and other ski equipment for many of us, and equally adept at outfitting you for summer cycling at the main shop on Highway 26. Drop in to see Shane and company and check out the vast array of great stuff they stock!
Side Launch Brewery is a new sponsor of both GDHL and Interclub this year, and is making a big impression as a relative newcomer in the craft brewery space. Their Collingwood brewery offers Wheat, Pale Ale and Dark Lager. In addition, those of you who attended the closing GDHL dinner had an opportunity to sample the latest addition to their lineup, a clementine flavoured version of their Pale Ale. Very nice, but be sure not to confuse it with the Stiegl Radler that some of us are drinking as a convenient way to get a couple of servings of fruit juice. They come in similar big cans, but Side Launch's version is over 6% alcohol, rather than 2.5%.
Craigleith member Ron Warren is another long time supporter of the Club through his ski distribution enterprise, which features Lange, Dynastar and other top brands. Lange race boots are ubiquitous, and justifiably so, and the Dynastar master's GS ski, among other Dynastar race skis, remains at the top of every GDHL racer's wish list.
Last but not least, Royal LePage Locations North is a big part of the local real estate scene and a big part of Craigleith. Led by Craigleith member Desmond von Teichman, the team has ski country covered from offices in Collingwood, Thornbury and Meaford and looks forward to meeting your real estate needs with personal, professional and progressive real estate services.
Diversions
Some of you may have noted Marcel Hirscher winning a World Cup GS at Garmisch in early March by 3.28 seconds, a margin not seen since the days of Ingemar Stenmark. See here for details and video. Not as elegant to watch as Ted Ligety, but he's trimming the line in a way that was perhaps predicted by Bode Miller when he commented on Ted's dominance at the time of the Sochi Olympics. Notably, the day before in the shortened Garmisch downhill, if you were a second out you were in 34th place and DFL (49th) was but 1.71 seconds out.
See below for a neat video of Marcel skiing SL in a special setting, with special effects.
The Story of Sally
In writing these missives, I've tried to avoid things that might be characterized as self-aggrandizement. This hasn't actually been too challenging, as my results have not often offered up much to aggrandize. So I hope you will forgive this bit being a lot about me, despite the title.
When I've struggled with my skiing over the years, as improvement hasn't come as quickly as I might hope, I've often attributed it to not having started skiing as a child. I don't blame my parents for this. They were born in Scotland and Santa Barbara, not exactly hotbeds of skiing, and church on Sundays was a professional obligation for the Reverend Principal Dr. Donald Mathers. But recent developments suggest that my gene pool might have included an inferior posterior.
While attending a Pratte camp in Sun Peaks a year ago November, I suffered a recurrence of the jammed sacroiliac that I've had from time to time in the past. On going off to see my usual medic, I was passed along to her mat leave substitute. She didn't actually fix the problem very quickly, but observed that the problem could be due to my gluteal muscles not working properly and failing to provide the desired support for the spine. This is apparently pretty common. My fitness guru referred to it as "gluteal amnesia." Fortunately it wasn't the dreaded buttocks dementia.
But there was treatment to be had. I was introduced to Sally Belanger. (I have come to refer to her as Sally the Ass Teacher, which is a disrespectful way to talk about an accomplished and attractive person, but I think it's kind of catchy.) You can read her website for the full story of what she does, but in short she taught me to turn down my hip flexors and turn up my glutes for stabilization and other purposes. This was about a year ago, but the big dividend came when ski season started. I had asked her whether this training might help to keep me out of the back seat when skiing, by helping me to push / keep my hips forward. Her cautious optimism proved to be well founded. No longer did I have to explain to Jacques and Carrie that I wasn't deliberately turning late and skiing low.
Not having to spend time retrieving oneself from the backseat opens up a whole new world of being able to start implementing all of the things one has been learning about for years and had only occasionally been able to experience. My story would be even better with a few hundies at the right time, and inconsistency is still evident, but big points at Interclubs and two Club Championship medals are unprecedented in my little world. Better still, I know that I can now go looking for speed that was previously way out of reach.
I'm not quite sure what the moral of this story is. All the years of getting ski coaching look like they may finally pay off as I had always hoped, and I look forward to taking advantage of even more coaching, but I think the key to my little jump ahead was Sally's lessons. So maybe the moral is that if you're frustrated at seemingly not being able to do something, you need to look for an explanation outside the box and then go to work on fixing the problem.
Sayonara
This will be the last "regular" newsletter for a while. I am hoping to be able to announce an off-season GDHL event in the next little while, but need some committee blessing. (If you see JF or Byron, tell them I'm looking for 'em.) If you have suggestions for next season, send us an email. We are particularly keen to keep up the growth in participation by the younger generation and increase the number of female participants.
Thanks for making it a great season! Happy Easter, and happy end of season skiing.
Cheers,
James Mathers