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Emily Keen Blog Winter 23/24

Emily Keen Blog Winter 23/24

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My season started right at the beginning of December where I moved into our base in Austria. We were very lucky this year as there was lots of snow really early in the season,  so we were able to train in Reiteralm straight away. Throughout the December period we trained on the dry land starts, with snow over the top, and created some of our own. Also I spent some time in Flachu in the absolute park training jumps and my compressions. Of course we also got to enjoy a couple of powder days with the lots of fresh snow which came. Just before Christmas, I had two races in Reiteralm which were FIS. In the two races we didn’t do qualification before meaning we got put in heats down to our FIS points, which was really good as I got to gain more experience from doing more heats. In both of these races I made it to the small final and got 7th place both days. After this I got to go home to see my family for a lovely Christmas and new year. 

Straight after the new year we were back out to base and had a couple days training before a big block of 6 races in Reiteralm, which were 2xJunior, 2x Europa cup and 2x FIS. The first two junior races wasn’t the best for me as on the first day they went straight into heats, but were I have low FIS points compared to other girls I got put into a very hard heat to begin with and came out the first day in the round of the round 32 and came 21st. The next day we had qualification but I messed up my banked turns placing me into 17th, just outside of the top 16 which I needed to be in to go to heats. We then went into the Europa Cups where I picked up some decent results coming 24th on first day and 20th on the next. Due to how intense all the races and training were in this time frame, the team decided we should have the day off of the first FIS race and only do the second day. On the day the FIS race I had a pretty decent qualification putting me into heats (top 16) where I was able to go through my first heat and moved onto semis. In the semis, I messed up my start so consequently I ended up in the small finals. In the small finals me and this other girl ended up crashing together in bank three. She was on my inside coming around the turn and ended up crashing just in front of me and I had no where to go so skied into her went face first into the nets. I ended up going to the hospital to get checked over, and I had fractured my nose, had a concussion (ended up in hospital for the night so they could keep check on me) and busted up my face a little bit. So now I am going to go home for 1-2 weeks to recover so that I am prepared and focused on the races to come in February. 

Emily Keen

Emily Keen

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