COLLEGE!!!!

There's a saying out there that college is the best four years of your life. I can't really disagree with this, I loved my college experience and wouldn't trade it for anything. But only 4 years? That's so limiting. With this in mind I returned over the weekend to the glory circuit of college racing to prep for my upcoming Europe trip and have some fun.

The college ski racing circuit really is unto itself. For starters, it's the only circuit in which skiing is a team sport. Although there are individual titles to be had your team wins and loses as a whole, men and women combined. This creates a much louder atmosphere at the start and the finish, and it's awfully refreshing after racing on the NorAm and FIS circuit where cheering for others comes mostly from...the college skiers. The skiing is also very competitive, making for an overall great race.

Skiing at Williams, I had never been in a FISU out West (they're called carnivals out East) and had never raced at Eldora Mountain before. These FISUs, hosted by Colorado University, lasted three days. The first two days were GSs, while today was a slalom. Starting 18 on the first day I skied well enough from outside the top 15 (college seeding) and was able to put two good runs together to notch my first victory of the season. Winning always feels good, and this was no exception. The victory from the first day got me bib 6 for the second day of GS, and again with my new DODGE boots I was able to fight both runs to squeak out the win.

Today, with about half a foot of new snow and no course workers the race officials were forced to cancel the race before the completion of the first run. These are the downsides of college racing, especially out West. While this was a major disappointment it was the right call. I started 18 again (again, college seeding) and came down into 6th position, 2.7 seconds out. By the time they cancelled the race the course had deteriorated to a point that the holes resembled lunar craters more than anything else. I ended up taking off a bit early as the organizers still were trying to pull off a women's slalom, and I didn't feel the need to sit through 5 hours of more slalom in bad conditions for no reason.

That turned out to be somewhat of a tactical error. I was unaware that the awards were belt buckles, which sounds really cool to me. I got hosed out of a belt buckle after winning a Super G at Bogus Basin when I was 17 (I'm still holding out, Carmen!) and I haven't been right ever since. Back to Eldora, the crowd at awards somehow convinced the organizers that getting awards was a must-be-present-to-win scenario, and bumped everyone up a notch. Nick Cohee, the runner up at the GS race, sent me a pic of the belt buckle and as the rightful owner of this property I am currently in the process of righting the ship and restoring some sense of normalcy to the ski racing world. This means that Espen Lysdahl, who placed fourth in the race, will ultimately go back to getting a wooden spoon for an award instead of a bronze belt buckle. He knows it's bad luck to take someone else's medal so it won't be too hard. Plus, I expect Espen will win no less than 20 of these types of medals over his college career so I'm not too torn up about doing this. Sometimes remembering the glory years takes a little more work than you think.

Anyway, heading to Europe on Tuesday where apparently there is so much snow that races are being cancelled. Erik Fisher is over there now and told me that Austria got a legit 5 ft dump of snow. Paul Epstein said he skied chest deep powder yesterday. I spoke with the USST this morning and found out that my ride to the opening Europa Cups in Meribel, France has evaporated as they haven't been able to train in Sölden and are heading there now, a week early. Driving to France solo is something that I was trying to avoid, but hopefully I can train it or I'll just suck it up and make it happen. Should be a great racing experience!