This Week's Schedule

Speed-oriented gate and gateless training with Sandy Nattress, Wednesday through Friday, mornings and afternoons.
GDHL first race - Super G on Saturday morning. There will be a separate newsletter later in the week with special Super G details, but remember you must be there by 9:30 to check in and inspect, or you won't be allowed to race, you must have a helmet with hard ears and you must hang around after the race to help roll the nets.
Adult gate training will be SL. Saturday's session will be in the afternoon instead of the morning and will start at 1:00 pm or when the nets are all rolled. Sunday's session will be at 9:30 as usual.
Fast & Female will start at 1:00 pm instead of 9:30 on Saturday. Watch for a possible schedule change for Adult Tech on Saturday as well. Sunday Adult Tech will be at 9:30.
Snow School's annual apres-ski event for adult participants will be on Saturday afternoon. I suspect it's in the President's Loft in the South Lodge at about 2:30, but I'll try to confirm details.

Last Call For Team Buy-in

Those who are on a team are entitled to buy a 5% interest in any season-end cash winnings from the Calcutta by paying 5% of the purchase price of the team. Full details are in the recent Calcutta Wrap-Up edition of this bulletin. BUT, YOU MUST DECLARE BEFORE RACING STARTS, i.e. before 10 am Saturday. If you want to buy, send an email to our treasurer, Trent Winstone, including your member account number.

Weekend Results

Saturday afternoon saw the first Interclub race of the season. Things looked a bit dire when only ten roster places were taken by midweek, but soon after the roster was full. The Stairway slope at Devil's Glen was certainly firm, but not quite as precarious as at the time of the 2014 final. Craigleith rolled to a decisive victory. Full results are here. Alec Libert and Phil Ruffolo made memorable Interclub debuts, finishing 1, 2 overall, with Alec winning by over a second. They were followed by Paul Atkinson in third. Captain Taylor Simms-Brown was fourth fastest man on his new skis and with little recent racing, followed by Jeff Sutherland. However, Julia Roth of DG was fourth overall, just a few hundies behind Paul. Kate Veer, at slightly more than twice Julia's age, finished as the third fastest woman. Jeff Sutherland won the newly introduced MVP award by scoring the most points, i.e. winning the largest age group. Jeff picked up 30 points, while Allan LaChance won his age group and scored 28. Margaret Isberg was co-MVP on the women's side, scoring 24. Craigleith won all but two of the age categories in which we had an entrant, and finished second in those two. Mary Riopelle, Tiana Boyman and Chris Shipton also won their categories, while Craig Shibley, Trent Winstone, Chris Fregren and Rob Burnes all scored 25 points or more. Next race is Saturday 30 January at the Peaks. P.S., if you have a bit of time on your hands, see whether you can find someone in the results who did rather better than his GDHL ranking suggests. Stay tuned for recriminations! And check out this short article on masters' racing from Escarpment Magazine. The author might not have been so kind to Jeff S. had he known Jeff would beat him by 14.5 seconds at DG.

Meanwhile, Kate Ryley took the opportunity of a vacant GDHL schedule to win both of the women's NZ Cup FIS slaloms at Craigleith over the weekend. It seems traditional that a retiring star will participate in local races to bring the benefit of his or her low FIS points to help aspiring racers reduce their points. (Julien Cousineau took this role on the men's side at Craigleith.) Apparently the trick is to win, but not by too much. Kate actually lost the first run on Saturday to Jackie Atkins of Craigleith, but won overall by 0.64. Sunday, she took the first run by 1.40 and beat Jackie overall by 1.99, although I had the impression watching her last run that she remembered the "not by too much" rule about the fourth gate from the finish.

Fashion News

Regular readers will recall that these missives have frequently been graced by portraits of Carrie Grinter-Lenauskas (recently retired adult race coach, chair of the Ladies' Day committee, wife of the famous Lithuanian GDHL racer, Ironman finisher etc.) sporting outfits from her personal collection and the corporate collections of Spyder and Karbon. One highlight is below.

However, Carrie has, at least for the moment, departed the ski industry and is now working with a swim suit and outdoor apparel company. No doubt her wardrobe remains well stocked, but we may have to wait until next year to see next year's outfits.

FIS Points Porn

The Internet is a wonderful place for those wanting to exercise their imaginations. (Gentlemen!! This is about ski racing. If you can't read "swim suit" and "porn" in proximate paragraphs without losing focus, I don't know what the world is coming to.) Alec Libert and Phil Ruffolo (1, 2 in last Saturday's Interclub and 1, 6 in last year's GDHL overall) were recalling before their matchup with Julia Roth that the last time they had lost to a female was when they were 13 and racing against Kate Ryley and Larissa Yurkiw. Many are eagerly awaiting the first GDHL match-up between Kate and her many former Craigleith Nancy Greene and Mackenzie team mates about 13 years later. But where can we go with handicapping? Well, Alec beat Julia by almost 1.3 seconds on Saturday, or about 4% on a short course, while Phil beat her by about 0.3. Then FIS tells us that the last time Kate raced Julia, about 13 months ago, Kate won by 2.50 seconds or about 2.6% over two runs and that Kate beat Julia by almost exactly 4% the day before that. In the same races, Jackie Atkins beat Julia once and lost to her once. And checking the results of last year's Club Championships on our own GDHL site, we learn that on the same course Jackie (who was beaten by Kate in the NZ Cup) finished less than a second behind Alec and less than 0.7 behind Phil in GS, and beat Phil by 2.1 seconds in SL. (Phil may have overlooked this.) Alec was DNS in the SL, but Jackie lost to Paul Atkinson by 2.6 in the SL and of course Alec beat Paul fairly handily at the Interclub GS. Still losing focus guys? This is awesome! Show up Saturday and Sunday to see rather than speculate.

GDHL Forerunners

Contact Doug Jarvis if you know someone who would like to forerun at a GDHL race.

Track 3 - A Great Event, a Great Cause and a Sweet Deal!

The Track 3 Friends and Family Race Day is on Friday, 12 February, just before Family Day weekend. Tickets are $100 for members, and a charitable tax receipt of about $75 brings the net cost below $65, less than what most of us pay for a half day of gate training. Here is what your ticket buys you:

morning gate training
a 2 run GS on Big John in the afternoon
great food all day...morning, lunch and apres
complimentary beer, wine and cider until 4PM (please...no RUI's...racing under the influence!)
guided snowshoeing, morning and afternoon yoga, and lots more for your valentines who don't share your love of snow
a fun apres and awards ceremony with cool medals
the chance to support Track 3, and be inspired by the many current and former Ontario Para team members who will be special guests

Buy your tickets here.

Diversions

Here's a nice compilation of highlights from the Norwegians' domination at Wengen last weekend, as a reward for sticking it out to the end.

See you in the start gate!

James Mathers