Wanaka FIS series trip

27/08/08

WANAKA TRIP August 2nd -10th

The FIS team composed of Floriane PATUREL (Turoa FIS coach), Joseph Wright and Stewart Dodson went down to Wanaka from August 2nd to August 10th for the Wanaka FIS series. They stayed at the Lookout Lodge which a great place to stay about 10 minutes drive from Wanaka. The Vail ski team were staying there as well for the series.

Joseph Wright and Stewart Dodson raced 2 GS and 2 SL at Cardrona and Treble Cone.
The snow conditions and the weather were great, they had 4 races in 5 days planned and 2 days training.
The days were long as always on race day. They were on snow by 7:30am every day so it meant early wake up 5:30am then a 45 min drive up to the ski field. Racing 2 runs, some free skiing in the afternoon then price giving, drive back down to the lodge by 4 pm, Tuning skis, dry land, coaches meeting, team meeting, scraping skis and bed time!!!!
Floriane tuned the skis every day to make sure the kids got some time to do dry land (core work out, play soccer or jog and stretching) and some school work (very important!!)

The athletes that attended were at a very high level, with the New Zealand national team, racers from all around the world (USA, CZE, Switzerland, etc), the famous free rider Jon Olsson from Sweden and Urs Imboden from Moldova.

Our team did well for their first FIS race. They didn’t have a lot of training before the event but the goals were to get FIS points and gain experience. Joseph and Stewart are 1st year FIS and 15 years old. The FIS level is a huge step, you race with older people and they are at a very high level. They need to gain experience, work by themselves, and be individual. They are young in the circuit and they know where they are now and how much work they have to do! Floriane has high expectations for her team but she knows that they have to keep working hard to improve technically.

Joseph Wright finished all races and scored 199 points in GS his best finish and 272 in SL. Stewart Dodson didn’t finish the GS but he got 2 finishes in SL and scored 240 points. Both of them made the top 30 after the 1st run in SL at Treble Cone and started 1st and 3rd second run!! TC is a really hard run, steep and hard snow.

In conclusion we had a great trip. We got a lot of experience and we are ready for the next race.

The next FIS races are at Mt Hutt for the ANC Finals, September 9-13th.