Bankso is a pretty cool place. After a small training block in Innerkrems, AUT with the two USST GS specialists, Tim Jitloff and Tommy Ford (Ted Ligety stayed in Russia to train and Bode decided to go boat shopping in Turkey), I joined the other ski racers in bombarding the few flights that day heading to Sofia, Bulgaria. The Bansko venue is apparently different than most other World Cups in that all of the athletes' transport and lodging at the hotel are the same. We were loaded onto different busses, each with a 3 or 4 national teams (our bus was Canada, USA, Sweden, Germany), and were driven 3 hours to Bankso where we all stayed under the same roof, the Strazhite Hotel. I was paired for the week with former college skier and World Cup staple Jimmy Cochran, and after some creative furniture rearrangement in our room we were both able relax, unpack, and not worry about rolling onto each other throughout the night.
As this was the first ever WC GS race held at Bankso, everyone was essentially a rookie racing on the hill. This was pointed out to me by my former ski coach and current Universal Sports commentator Steve Porino in a nice note he sent me earlier in the week. It was comforting when free skiing the race hill the day before the race. One thing that caught most people off guard was how flat the light was at 10am, the proposed start time the next day. Ted was very active in trying to move the start back an hour or so, citing that it would be an unfair advantage to those that raced later when the sun made it over the tall trees bordering the race run. During the warmup it became standard practice to take 5 or 6 turns and then shut it down, start again, stop again, all the way down to avoid getting thrown by all of the sidehill and micro-terrain that was unseeable.
For the second warmup run I brought up my race skis, and managed to somehow hit a rock on the race course. The damage was directly under the ball of the my right foot, and extended on the base edge about 3-4 inches. In the finish arena I ran into Leif Haugen's technician Nicklaus, who helped me take it down as best he could but it was largely unchangeable. I don't know what the odds of hitting a rock that large on the race track are, but they can't be good. No one else I talked to touched a thing. Determined to take one more run on the hill I switched my edges, putting the burr on the outside left edge, and took another lap. I was feeling much more in control of my equipment this time down the hill and was starting to relax when my burred outside edge gave out, knocked out my other ski, and I went down hard.
The mental full body systems check I performed on myself was not good; my left shoulder was in a lot of pain and my right thumb had been bent back pretty far. I also managed to break the zipper on my training shorts...not bad for a crash while free skiing. I saw Mike Day on the side of the hill and told him I needed to see the team doctor. I couldn't much raise my arm and my thumb wasn't doing anything. I couldn't believe what was happening: had this ridiculous chain of events really just taken me out of tomorrow's race? For about 10 minutes there it wasn't looking to good. I've had two shoulder issues before, both on that side, and both times the pain that I initially felt upon impact only got worse. Luckily, this time it got better. After about 10 minutes and a healthy amount of Aleve things started to reverse. The thumb and shoulder were sore but they weren't really that hurt. I found a way to grip my pole that was a little different, and actually went and took a couple free runs afterwards. The race was back on!
Race day was snowy and windy, and there was some talk that it would be cancelled. To get away from this talk I largely kept my head down and focussed on the warmup courses and taking free ski runs. The body parts were still sore from yesterday's crash but nothing that was affecting performance. After getting a couple of solid laps on the training course I was happy with the way I was skiing and excited for the race.
Even though it was windy, people were going at irregular intervals, and light was coming in and out, the guys who were skiing well were still the ones that were moving up. I came out of the gate charging and skied well up top. I got a few gates of wind and lost a ski on one turn but carried good speed through the first sidehill section of the course. Into the next fallaway section I had a pretty large mistake that ended up sealing my fate for the afternoon. I got another blast of wind on the bottom flats which definitely didn't help, but I could have skied faster and made things a lot easier on myself.
One thing I was trying to do the whole time over in Bansko was to enjoy the experience and take in how lucky I was to be doing this. Crashing on the warmup day, hitting a rock on my race skis, and battling bad weather diverted from that focus, but I still ended up having a lot of fun and it was definitely one of the more memorable trips of my life. For starters, my Williams teammate and good friend Tavis Moonan surprised me at the Sofia airport, saying that shortly after he found out I was racing he decided to book a plane ticket and offer his support. The other USST guys were shocked I had a friend who would travel this far to come cheer me on, everyone realized what doing this type of thing meant. More than just vocal support, he was always on hand to help me out with my tuning duties. Since I was probably the only guy in the race tuning his own skis and was using another technician's bench (thanks Pepo!) I always did my skis later at night when the bench was free. Tavis would accompany me to the tuning compound each day, and even ended up taking over scraping duties on race night since my thumb couldn't zip up my jacket let alone push a scraper. I'm pretty sure that would have been a low point had it taken me an hour to scrape two pairs of skis, but instead it was something that we laughed about and just chalked it up as another ski racing experience.
Also, as Will Brandenburg and I were waiting for our flight home in the Frankfurt airport, we met Staff Sergeant Brian Nash who was returning back to the States after 6 months in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Staff Sgt. Nash is in Infantry in the Army, and stepped on an IED 3 months ago. The 1.5 lb IED that discharged was siting on top of a 25 lb IED, but luckily the wiring was faulty and the larger bomb never went off. He had surgery 3 months ago to repair his compound fractured foot with the hopes of finishing out his tour. The surgery did not go well, the bones didn't heal properly, his nerves got pinched, and he has no feeling in his foot. He spent the last 6 weeks taking morphine pills to make the problem go away. It didn't and eventually he was forced to pull the plug and head home. From Georgia, Nash is heading to Ft. Carson in Colorado Springs where the doctors will re-break his foot and start the healing process. He had no regrets about his experience and ended up telling Will and I story after story about his time in Afghanistan. Talking to him, my shoulder started hurting a lot less and I decided to not worry about my sprained thumb anymore. It is times like these where I am especially grateful to have the opportunity to do what I love. Worrying about other things is a waste, because you never know when things are going to change. Meeting people like Staff Sgt. Nash only drives home this point. I invited him up to Vail whenever he wants, and I hope he takes me up on it. Next stop, La Crosse, Wisconsin!
