We have finally entered race season. The past years, i’d usually race every weekend approximately from December to April. But this year, we’ve changed the approach. We're going to train and select the race in which we want to perform, which will be Austrian FIS and Europa Cup slaloms. My first races went really well. I managed to enter the top 15 from a high bib number, which led to scoring some points. This helped my bib number for the next races. We then went to the first two Europa cups. These are the most difficult of the season because most of the people here want to qualify for world cups. The Europa cups work like this: The top 60 from the first run qualify to compete in the second run. The aim is to finish in top 30 to score some Europa cup points.
This was my first Europa cup slalom, so I had no expectations and wanted to qualify for a second run just to get that feeling for the future. It was going to be difficult from bib 90 on a very demanding slope and course, however even with a huge mistake (nearly taking myself out!) I still managed to ski into 50th which I was quite happy with. Unfortunately I straddled on the second run. After that first block of races, if was time to go home for a little Christmas break.
Thanks to my good results at the start of the season, I have managed to qualify for the world championships in Courchevel in February. The championships were a little impossible dream that I’ve fixed myself at the end of last season knowing that I was quite far off the selection criteria, but I knew that I had the potential to make it. Since the announcement which was made by GBS, I’ve really been looking forward to this particular event, yet I have felt a lot of pressure and have been trying not to over do it in terms of training so not to injure myself. Having said that, I am very much looking forward to the season ahead...
