Super G at Bristol

I got home from Bear Creek Thursday night and left Friday after school with my daughter to Bristol Mountain for a 2 day speed elements camp and then a Super G race on Monday. In New York, the state is split east and west for the JIII ski racers (born 1996 and 1997) and the ski areas in central NY are considered part of the west. The East camp and race is at Gore and the west, as I said, is at Bristol. Bristol is steep so the kids have to turn at high speed, Gore is not steep so the athletes have to learn to glide. At both mountains the racers get up to speeds in the high 50s or low 60s; pretty fast. It would be great if we could get training on both hills but the state championships mostly bounce back and forth between the 2 mountains. Because everyone wants a home hill advantage when possible, the west will not go to Gore when the championships are at Bristol and vise versa when the championships are at Gore. Neither venue could handle all the racers from the state at one time.

The Bristol crew has been doing this camp and race for a long time and really have it dialed in. This was a great camp. It starts with sections of the hill and gradually works to a full length run on Sunday afternoon. The athletes learn patience (waiting for the rise line to begin turning) and how to progressively add edge angle above the fall line. The only thing better would be figuring out a way to run this camp earlier in the season but this is pretty impossible due to the inconsistency of early season snow... it has to be pretty hard snow and enough of it to get the protective fencing in place so that it will work properly.

Monday saw good race conditions and the set was really good. The athletes had a blast. It was the last race of the series so the selection for State Championships followed. Labrador qualified 6 of the 9 eligible athletes (including my daughter)...not bad; no real stars but some pretty solid skiing. There is currently some really good skiing going on in the Western NY JIII ski racing world.