It was a busy week at home with all sorts of festivities surrounding the 1 Year Countdown to the Olympic Games. My medal at Cypress caught the attention of several TV and radio networks. The week started out with a celebration in the Village Square to let the community know about the plans for it as ‘Celebration Plaza’, a place to present locals with their medals after the Olympic Events. Davey, Aleisha and I were the local medallists at Cypress, so they had us speak about what it would be like to celebrate an Olympic medal right there with our friends and family. Here is a bit of what I said:
“...it would be such an honour. This is an amazing opportunity and we are SO fortunate to have the support we’re seeing now that Skicross is an Olympic sport. Our friends and family know how much we have put into this -- even before we had coaches and ski techs and funding -- so they would be extremely proud to see us realize our dreams. These seemed like far-off dreams until I was standing on the podium at Cypress the other day, at the bottom of the Olympic course. That’s when it hit me that I actually have a good shot at winning an Olympic medal one year from now. ” CBC’s coverage of the finals in the race at Cypress were played up on the big screen for everyone to see, as we called out the play-by-play. I also participated in the Cake Cutting with Mayor Ken Melamed at the Main Stage. Over the next couple of days I had interviews, some of which were live interviews, with the following shows: CBC News: Vancouver at Six City TV with Host Greg Harper CBC Early Edition (Radio) with Host Rick Cluff CBC News: Today The Bill Good Show, CKNW Radio Pontiac World of Skiing Global National with Kevin Newman (walkabout through the village for The National at 5:30pm Saturday)
0 Comments
I just wrapped up my 5th World Cup Race of the year at Cypress , BC. I was having a lot of fun training on the Olympic course all week and qualified 6th on Thursday. Friday was race day and my friends and family showed up to support me - it was so nice to have them all there!
I won the first heat by a fair amount. In the second heat I was hot on Meryll’s tails and actually had to push her forward to prevent running over her. This sent me back a bit and the other two girls passed me. I made a pass into one of the big banked turns after a long flat section with two doubles on it. I was gaining on the other girl and thought I had to pass her to advance to the semi final. I pointed it right off the last hip jump instead of scrubbing speed for direction so I could make the pass but I overshot that tranny and couldn't hold it. I went down. I got up and skied down assuming that I had not advanced to the semi-finals. Turns out, Clara had already been disqualified for something that had happened up to when I attempted to pass her so I was still in the race! In the semi-final I had a good start and skied well down the entire course finishing first. I had made it to the FINALS!!! I came out of the gate first in the final, but got tangled up with Ophelie, opening the door for Aleisha to slide out front. Ophelie and I battled it out down the whole course until she got a little wild on one of the lower features and crashed hard. I made a good move off it and managed to get my skis back on the snow, just as I saw her flying up beside me, stilling gaining vert, partway through a backflip. I finished the race in 2nd! Pretty exciting to get the SILVER MEDAL on the Olympic Course!!! As I was standing on the podium and they were playing our National Anthem, it hit me...I have a really good shot at winning and Olympic Medal. Canadians took 5 out of the 6 medals at the Cypress Skicross World Cup. It was a pretty amazing day for the whole team! I almost won a World Cup Skicross today! I was beginning to wonder if I even had what it takes after the first two events. I was 30th, and then 28th in those. Yikes! But yesterday I put it together and came in 2nd in qualifying. RIght then, I knew that I do have what it takes to be right in there.
The big race was today. The first corner on the course was a hip jump, with a landing that was perpendicular to the take-off. I had a strategy for my line through it that worked really well in training and qualifying. I sacrificed a bit of speed on the in-run in order to land high on the tranny and generate some speed for the long flats that followed. The other girls were going off it with more direction than I was and were landing on the flats...which was the fastest way to get through the corner, but they weren't coming out with nearly as much speed for the straight stretch. I wasn't able to hit it properly in my quarter finals, as I was in first coming into it and tried to protect my line. I got passed by two girls, one being my teammate, Kelsey Serwa, and dropped into third. My coach had said to be patient if this happened and wait for the 'basketball turn'. I stayed right on the girl in front of me and made an inside pass down at the basketball turn to advance to the next round. In the semi-finals I was first out of the start and held the lead the whole way down. The finals were really exciting. I was tight for 2nd out of the start, behind Ophelie and came out of the first hip with way more speed than Meryll. I went for a pass to take the lead and didn't quite get Ophelie before entering into the tight basketball turn, which is an off-camber hairpin turn. She went straight into it to protect her line and threw her skis sideways to pivot and make the turn. I had nowhere to go but into her, and got sucked right off the track with my ski in between hers. We both almost wiped out, and I was convinced that the girls behind us would go flying by, but I guess they were caught up in their own battle for 3rd. I was bummed for about half a second as I crossed the finish line behind Ophelie, and then it hit me that I'd just come 2nd in a World Cup Skicross. I was SO stoked! I'm still SO stoked! It was an amazing feeling, and an amazing day! I just got back from my first week back on snow after my shoulder surgery. It’s coming along nicely. I wasn’t quite far enough post-op to starting sending it in the course, and spent a lot of time getting used to my new Stoeckli’s.
Yes, I switched to Stoeckli, and I’m pretty stoked about that. I ran the course in sections many times and got my airs dialed-in. I actually had a bit of a break-through with my technique in the air. I nailed the big table-top over and over again. We have new physiotherapists and they are really great. I was able to work with Chris Napier a ton while we were up at camp and he got me on to some new progressions of my shoulder exercises. He and Dave Terlicher will be sharing the physio duties for the season. The really nice thing about this camp was that I got to share my world with my sister. She came up to try out for the team. She improved more than anyone could have ever imagined she would. Despite not having been on race skis since she was about 14, she was pinning it right off all of the jumps with solid skill by the end of the camp. Taking one for the team…Just two days after dislocating my shoulder in the first World Cup of the season, I went up to check-out the course in Flaine (FRA) in order to make a decision on whether to race or not-- based on the size of the features and the risk factor. It was a fairly mellow course, so I opted to chill out and rest-up while the other athletes trained on-course …I would just wing it on race day and try to get one more result before heading home for surgery. The plan was to go up and just run the time-trials to get a few more World Cup points, as this would help with establishing the team as serious contenders for Olympic medals, in hopes of acquiring sufficient funding for next season. I had a pretty decent run in the time-trials, so we decided I would at least pull out of the start in the quarter-finals . I ended-up having a great run and advancing to the semi-finals. Again, I would just pull out and see what happened. I had some pretty serious pain in my shoulder and my power out of the start gate was all from my left arm. I even did the one-armed poling! I was 2nd going into the first corner and being as tentative as I was with the throbbing shoulder bringing my confidence down (or just smartening me up!), I swung wide and got hung-up in some soft snow and got passed by Karin Huttary. I decided not to hit the jump coming out of the first corner, and just cruised down the rest of the track. As soon as the gate dropped in the small-final, the adrenaline kicked-in and I forgot all about my shoulder until I tried to use it to push…ouch! I let out a bit of a moan and dropped into my tuck. Somehow, I had managed to get out ahead of the other chicks and I led the pack the whole way down, skiing to a 5th-place result. We have decided that I will get my shoulder all fixed-up now rather than putting it off until springtime. This way I will have all summer to train and I’ll be ready to shred next season. I’ll get a full year of valuable experience before the Olympics. So yesterday was pretty exciting! It was a gorgeous sunny day at Les Contamines so the track was substantially faster than it had been during training and qualifying. Perfect for me, cause a lot of the girls get intimidated hitting jumps at these speeds.
I was fastest out of the start in my quarter-final, with Hedda Berndtsen of Norway right behind me. I came off the side-hill double with a loaded ski and my feet just shot out from under me. I somehow held it together, but Hedda went rippin' by me. I stayed right on her the whole way down and went flying by her off the first set of doubles coming into the finish to take the win in that heat. My semi-final was even more intense. I was way out in front...just killin' it...and I got bucked by this one little roller before the final straight-stretch and dislocated my shoulder on the fly. I don't know how I did it, but I just dropped back into a half-tuck and sent it off the two doubles, holding on to my lead right through the finish. That was when it got ugly. I had so many different people yanking on it trying to get it back in, speaking in French, and it just wasn't happening for us. I had to try and remain calm for about 20 minutes of that and then, finally, the French doctor got it back in. It was quite the scene! At one point I let a piercing scream of agony slip out and I heard the crowd go "oooh". Coach Arch got on the radio and suggested that I head back up and just slide out of the start for the finals, in case there was a crash and I could just cruise right into 3rd place. I was all for it, but they ran the race just before I got to the start. So I ended-up in 4th, which is still pretty killer, if you ask me! The girl that I beat in both my heats ended-up 2nd, and Ophelie David took the win. We were up at Powder King for a Canadian Skicross Team training camp. We had a full-length course built with lots of features so we'd be ready to charge at the first race of the season in Telluride, December 13-15th. Telluride was good...I qualified 3rd! Right behind Karin Huttary(51.00) and Ophelie David(51.15) with a 51.25. We were the only girls under 52 seconds. I had some bad starts as a result of having dislocated my shoulder at Powder King, so I ended-up 8th in the race. At least I know I'm in there, based on the time-trials! Based on my results at the Farnham Camp and my strong showing at fitness testing, I have been named to the Canadian National Skicross Team. The season kicks-off VERY soon!
So there you have it...All that hard work has paid off for me! I've been spending a lot of time in the gym and cross-training and have squeezed a bit more surfing in at Sombrio as well as some quality wet-season fly fishing. I went to Mexico in May for another surf trip...check out the pics! I'm getting the hang of it! After a week at home finishing-up the marketing course I was taking through BC Open University and riding my bike (DH mostly), I took-off for Farnham Glacier to train, and to prove myself and my ability to the National Skicross Team selection committee. Mission accomplished! I won all of the full-length timed runs in the course and I was consistently fastest out of the start when we had the timing set-up at the first corner. There was a camp at Cypress earlier in the year, and several girls were eliminated from the running. Only those who really showed promise were invited to this Farnham camp, and those of us who did well there have been thrown into an intense training program throughout the summer and fall, which includes moving to Calgary for a month and training at C.O.P. We just had our fitness testing and I did really well. The team will be attending 7 World Cup Events in Europe this season, 1 World Cup in the US, as well as X Games, and several other North American events. I'm off to New Zealand to get on snow tomorrow...after an unbelievable summer of training in the gym, biking, and surfing! Ashleigh grew-up alpine ski-racing and got into Ski Cross in January 2003. She immediately qualified for the X Games—dominated the X Qualifier at Tahoe despite dislocating her shoulder in training—and went on to have an amazing season as the youngest on the Ski Cross circuit. Her natural talent and ability, in conjunction with unmatched charisma drew TV producers in and she was often the featured athlete on programs covering the events. She got used to racing with a mic on her jersey and quickly became an ambassador for the new sport. EXPN followed Ashleigh for an insider’s look at what goes on at the X Games as part of an hour long special, called EXPN 2Day, which boasted 145 million viewers.
After returning from an extremely successful trip to Europe in ’04—2nd in her first World Cup Ski Cross—the rookie went on to win the US Freeskiing Open in Vail. These events were heavily televised by CTV’s ‘Roger’s Sportsnet’ and NBC Sports, respectively. The media exposure that Ashleigh received in response to her results and her friendly, outgoing personality put her in the public eye as the face of Skicross. This put her in a good position to expand her ‘brand’. Ashleigh began shooting with the industry’s most renowned photographers, namely Blake Jorgenson, Scott Markowitz, and Paul Morrison, as well as top fashion photographers like Bryce Duffy. TV shows including Pontiac World of Skiing, and Ride Guide had her travelling the world to different events and heli-skiing with other pros. She even made her runway modeling debut in New York City at an event Vail Resorts put together called “Skiing is Sexy”. Ski Cross went through a bit of a lull when it was not sure to be picked up by the IOC as an Olympic sport; the North American circuit was fading out due to a lack of funding. This was the perfect opportunity for Ashleigh to focus on these other avenues and have fun skiing some fresh Powder! |
Categories
All
|