After Kuusamo, Finland we headed to Ramsau, Austria. Our team has had great success there over the last few years. I was looking forward to jumping a hill I have jumped well on and a course that is very hard in every condition. After not having many training session in a while, I was not completely sure how I was going to ski. After a few official training jumps, I felt like I was getting my rhythm back and felt confident. During the competition I had a pretty bad trial jump, and was pretty nervous going into the actual comp jump. I was able to put in a pretty decent jump that put me just over a minute behind the leader. Going into the cross country race, I knew I was going to have to push the pace pretty hard to move from pack to pack. Billy Demong and I worked together pretty well earlier in the race, and that allowed us to move up to the top 15. Luckily our wax techs hit the wax and structure very well and I was able to glide away from the pack on a down hill and was able to reach the group with top 10 before the finish. I was very excited to get my first top 1o of my career and to be able to share it with Bryan(8th) is even more special.
The next day I was looking forward to carrying the momentum from yesterday and reach for the same results. Unfortunately I didn't qualify for the competition from having a bad jump in the trial round/qualification. That was a very frustrating little bit for myself knowing I would have to wait until January to ski again!
Now I am back in Park City, Utah. I am going to be training very hard on the jumping hill before I go to Steamboat for Christmas on Saturday. I am excited to be able to spend the holiday before we go back no the road for 5 weeks. Our team will start in Schonach, Germany after the new year and will be ready to fight for podiums day in and day out!
Have a wonderful Holiday everyone!