Preseason - Making the World Cup Squad

So after a long summer of training ‘that’ time of year rolled around again, the time of year that makes all the hard work worthwhile as we find out the benefits of the last 6 months of toil, the time of year that brings the adrenaline rush we all crave!

Predictably we headed to our yearly preseason destination, Lillehammer, Norway. This track has the advantage of having ice early in the season and has become somewhat of our home track. It’s technical enough to provide challenges whilst also providing familiar surroundings on which to transfer all of our summer training onto the ice. We were here for a shorter period of time than usual as the 2012/13 FIBT calendar starts a lot earlier this season, however it provided enough time for us to familiarise ourselves with the headfirst part of proceedings whilst also allowing us to ‘find our feet’ with running on ice again (not as difficult as it might sound but still a challenge!!)

The view in Winterberg Germany at the top of the track.

Cutting a long story short we all got back into the swing of things pretty easily, putting down some really competitive times and speeds and all too soon after just under 2 weeks of sliding, good weather (for Norway!!), and good banter within our team it was off to Winterberg in Germany for the business end of the preseason, our  4 run selection race!

I won’t lie, Winterberg seems to bear a bit of a grudge against me, after two top 4 finishes in the Intercontinental cup a few years back I’ve not slid particularly well here, and the selection races didn’t go exactly to plan (again!!) The track is fairly simple to get down safely on but to do it with speed and decent downtimes is tricky.

The first day sliding was perhaps one of the craziest days of sliding I’ve had in my career, temperatures soared to just over 20degrees…Celcius!! Whilst this might sound like it would make the track into a waterpark it actually had the opposite effect, the track was in track record shape and I dare say if any of us had actually pushed particularly hard the track record would have been broken (unofficially!). I clocked a personal best downtime on the day and looked forward to some good racing a few days later! However the temperature then dropped…a lot. Race day saw temperatures in the minuses and fairly different conditions from the start of the week, without making excuses I didn’t slide as well as I could of done and managed 4^th place after the two days of racing. The result wasn’t important however and there were far more important things to learn here for the future, mental race rehearsal, new understanding of certain corners and new equipment all came together for me over the week and will be valuable going forwards to my first race and indeed for any international races I consequently have in Winterberg.

Post run at Winterberg with my sled. Photo by Charlie Booker.

So onto the selection, after the race the selection committee meet and decide the team compositions for the following winter and I’m delighted to announce that I was selected for the World Cup circuit. The world Cup is the highest tier of international competition in our sport and will allow me to mix it with the big boys and see where I really stand! To say I’m excited at the challenges and experiences ahead of me would be an understatement, getting to this point has been 6 years in the making and I plan to make the most of it!

The first race is in Lake Placid, New York and will be televised LIVE on British Eurosport on Thursday 8^th November at 1800hours UK time. So if you fancy seeing me in action then I’de more than welcome your support! I’ll keep you posted!!!