I spent the week up at Hotham, my first time on snow this season. We were faced with variable difficult weather conditions. High winds, snowing, bad visibility and variable snow conditions. The Hotham events team did a great job, putting a lot of effort into getting the course prepared for an inspection/training on the Friday.
Saturday morning we were faced with similar conditions and we managed to get the qualification run off the ground. I was happy with my run, particularly after I entered one of the berms in the middle of the run expecting it to be ice, committing to the turn appropriately to find it was wind blown soft snomw which threw me back hitting my back on the ground pulling myself forward to continue the run, qualifying in 2nd place. The weather was too bad, and the snow too soft in areas to make it safe, so the finals were postponed until Sunday morning.
On Sunday morning the conditions were still difficult but the snow was harder and the course had been worked on . After qualifying in 2nd, I ended up with good gate selections, and progressed into the big final. I was pleased to find myself in such a good position after what has been a difficult year. It was myself, Katya (AUS), Yulia (RUS) and Violetta (RUS). I had a decent start but have to say I was justvery slow along the top flat, and found myself right on the back of Violetta in 4th place. As we progressed down the course, Violetta moved out to take more direction into the hip jump and I went more straight, causing us both to scream and land on top of each other over the hip, thank fully we both stayed up, and it was close coming into the final turns, and I finished in 4th position. I was pretty happy with the result as much as I would have liked to have held my 2nd place, but it was a good quality final and good racing all round!
In the second event, I qualified in 3rd place behind Katya(AUS) and Yulia(RUS) which I was again pretty pleased with. I progressed through each of the final heats, found myself achieve a nice overtake across the bridge in the semi final rouns, and yet again found myself comfortably in the big final. It was the same 4 of us battling for the podium once again. I had a pretty good start and once again just found myself slow across those top rollers, there wasn't any overtaking and I managed to enter the last couple of turns and crash out. After all the hiking up to the start gate which was about 200m above the chairlift fighting a head on wind, and 2 events worth of heats plus training runs all in one day, all our legs were pretty spent! All in all it was a great weekend of racing and I was stoked to find myself comfortably in the big final for both events. Be in touch soon!
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