The season has started! Welcome to the first in-season newsletter for the 2019 GDHL Race Season! Below you will find a wrap up from this weekends events, a reminder about our mid-season event, and details on the new timing chips that have been acquired by the GDHL.
Carrie Lenauskas demonstrating how to properly parent and dry land train simultaneously
SUNDAY’S RACE ON BIG JOHN
We are now one week into the 2019 GDHL race season. Our first race is behind us, and it delivered as advertised! The Big John GS is a staple Craigleith race, and we are fortunate enough to get to race it on the first weekend of every season. This edition of the race was as exciting as ever! After some strange mist/rain turned to frost in the early morning, the hill was shimmering like you’d expect from a hockey rink! The moment inspection began, you could hear the scratching of ski edges as they carved down the hill, perpendicular to the fall line and tried to gain traction on the icy surface. Once the race started the hill softened up and the racers enjoyed a great inaugural race to the 2019 season.
The spectators near the finish corral watched a speedy class of racers come through the finish line. Early in the race, Jeff Sutherland came down wearing bib 20 and put up the top time that stood for the majority of the first run until Mackenzie Irwin overtook over the lead! When all the snow settled, the top three overall racers were 1. Alec Libert (36.35), 2. Gordon Bruce (36.93), 3. Joel Charron (37.02). Mackenzie Irwin stood strong in her racing comeback, leading all women with a blistering time of 38.26 seconds, following her were Cheryl McConachie (39.90), and Alex Kappelle (40.36) in second and third respectively.
As mentioned in James’ previous news-blast on Sunday, the race was packed with new GDHL members, including lots of coaches. This is an exciting time for the under-30 age bracket in the GDHL and could be a promising foundation for the future of the league.
Results should be up shortly under the results tab on the GDHL.org website
Next Up: Sunday, January 13th, @ 10 am, Slalom on Big John
Find below a small compilation of Marcel Hirscher’s best slalom skiing for inspiration. Just make sure no one is filming with a drone!
CALCUTTA WRAP UP
On Saturday night we hosted our annual Calcutta event, and it was as fun as always. Team bidding ranged in the many thousands raising a total purse of $15,400. All of us can thank the outstanding committee members and their significant others who helped organize. Team listing should soon be up on the website. If you missed the event and would like to buy into your team, please ensure to let us know. If you have any questions about the event, you can email us and we’ll do our best to assist!
Mid Season Event! Saturday, February 2nd
We are on! The Committee is super excited for our debut, mid-season event. The race is a dual slalom on Comet, pitting the top 32 racers from the GDHL teams, up against each other. Teams are encouraged to come out and support their racers, with cheers and cowbells. There have been rumors that the winning team will receive a free shot-ski at the 80’s style Après Ski … but these are unconfirmed.
Following the exciting dual slalom, the 80’s style Après ski will be BYOB, with some delicious food available in the North Lodge. Themed outfits are encouraged, however skiboots and downhill suits should fit right in. The event will be family friendly, and open to all.
Timing Chips
Timing chips are nearly sold out! For those of you who bought them, you may pick them up at the race office. For those of you who have now realized you need to shave a couple seconds off of your times to keep up with your childhood rival on the slopes, you can purchase one of the remaining four by emailing Dave Henderson here. If you miss those four, you’ll need to sign up at the race office to include yourself in the next order of these chips.
For those unfamiliar with the chips, they are inserted in athletes ski boots and they communicate with sensors set up in the race course. Late last year, the GDHL purchased the infrastructure to run the system and the burden to athletes is only purchasing the timing chip for $100. The true benefit to this technology is that it integrates with any mobile device to deliver live results from the skier’s previous run(s). The idea is to enable athletes the opportunity to use objective metrics to measure their progress. It is revolutionary in the ski racing world that most of us were brought up in. For more information, find David Henderson.
Good Luck in the Big Slalom on Big John this Sunday! If you feel you’ve got some content that people will find interesting in the newsletter, please respond to this email with it!
-Doug