OPA Tour Wrap Up?

Hi Everyone,

looking down on the town of Olivone

I’ll pick up from where I left off. The sprint and 10km skate race in Campra.

The sprint qualifier felt a little slow for me. I think my body was still trying to pick up its speed from all the travel, so I ended up qualifying 26th. By the time the heats rolled around in the afternoon I felt a lot better. Unfortunately my tactics weren’t the best. I got boxed out quite hard, twice. These Euro’s don’t go easy on you during the sprints and are quite aggressive, or so I learned from that race. But I felt good about it at the end of the day, and even managed to out sprint a girl in the final stretch, putting me in 21st spot.

Fred finishing his 15km Skate race

The next day was the 10km skate. I took the first lap a little conservative, hoping to put all my speed and power into the climbs on the second lap. My second lap, therefore was quite a bit faster, putting me in 19th for the day. Not bad.

Pate, leaving the stadium on his third lap


Famous Dam where OO7 bungied off in the movie "Golden Eye"

The Girls


Later that week we traveled to a town called Forni Di Sopra, in Italy. It is situated in a section of the Dolomiti mountains. When we arrived it dumped snow all day (and night) leaving over 50cm of new snow!



The rest of the week we had nothing but clear blue skies. It was pretty spectacular.



The series of races over the weekend were a classic sprint, 5km classic, and a 10km skate. The sprint and 5km results were combined to give you a handy cap start for the final 10km race on Sunday. I guess the idea is to combine all the races giving you the overall champion for the entire weekend.

Lets start with the sprint. It was classic, and it was flat. That meant a lot of double polling… ☹ I tried my best, I really did. My start position was back with the slower sprinters, and by the end of the 1.3km a girl caught me whom I started 15sec ahead of. So… I didn’t qualify for the heats. I think I ended up 36th overall.

So I put that behind me and focused on the next day, the 5km classic. It went better for me. Again there was quite a lot of flat double polling on the course, but I felt great and really snappy on all the climbs. Unfortunately I fell on the one of the downhills. It wasn’t a bad fall, but in a 5km race, that can put quite a bit of damage on your final result.

Okay, last race. 10km skate. Finally, something that suites me a little better. With the previous two race results, my start time was 2 minutes and 25 seconds behind the leader. Ya I know, I was basically one of the last racers on course. But I felt great that day, so I just put my head down and went for it. It felt awesome! I would have to say, best race of the year. Because I was so far back I only managed to pass 3 or 4 people, putting me in 28th spot for the entire weekend. But I really felt like I gave it m all and skied aggressive the entire way. I think I had the 20th fastest time for just that day.

Lenny finishing in 6th place for the weekend. GREAT result! Quote from Lenny, "That was the hardest race of the year, by far."

Kevin finishing his race, with the dolomiti mountains in the background


Anyway, that was the last race of the trip for the OPA tour.
Time to head home?
Nope.

My teammate and I have decided to stay one more week in Switzerland to compete in a couple Swiss Cups this coming weekend. We are staying at the sports school once again in Davos, and then we will join up with a provincial swiss team for the weekend to compete in two 5km races.

That’s it for now, thanks for reading!

Thumbs Up for Switzerland!

I’ve been in Europe for about five days now. I have to say I am very impressed Switzerland so far. For the first few days we were staying in a sports school in Davos.

Davos is the hometown of the Academy’s newest coach, Christian. I swear he must have been some kind celebrity when he was living here. You can’t go anywhere without waiting an extra ten minutes while he catches up with old friends that he runs into wherever he goes. He does make a pretty good tour guide though, and knows all the good places to eat and shop, ski and have fun.

The ski trails in Davos are quite spectacular. You can ski for kilometers up and down the valleys, through trees and along creeks. They are perfectly groomed, and with mostly sunny skies the skiing doesn’t get much better.



One afternoon we went tobogganing on a 3km track down an alpine run. (An excuse to help keep us awake for the afternoon) It was a lot of fun. The best way I can describe it is something between luge, Chuck-waggon racing and actual Mario Cart.


Yesterday we traveled to the site of our first races in Campra. We are staying in a small town about 10min away from the ski trails called Olivone. Campra is situated in a mountainous pass with very steep, and rugged terrain. Today it had been dumping snow all day long.




Training has been going well. I’ve had some trouble getting over jet leg and not sleeping as well as I would have liked, but today I finally feel like I am coming around. First race is tomorrow, which is a skate sprint, followed by a 10km skate race on Sunday. I am excited to finally start racing. The courses are very hilly which suits me just fine. ☺
Looks like there will be a lot a strong racers here, which should be a good opportunity to put my racing to the test.

More to come in a few days.