Friday 26 August 2016

Chile, Summer update by Conrad


First week here in Chile is almost in the books with a well-earned day off starting in less than 12 hours! Quick recap of the first days on snow: Sun, Ice, Steeps, Rollers, Right rippin' skiing, some Tired legs, and Smiles too big to measure with a conventional slalom tape. Here is some proof, although the smiles part you'll just have to take our word on.

Coming up on the end of week 2 here in Chile, and despite the name things are really heating up! Temperatures AND skiing. Over the last few days the athletes were subjected to some high speed SG, a lot more sun, stunning views, and a couple of very early season races to top it all off. Morale is higher than the 3000+ meter altitude we're training at, and the crew is ready for more!

After what has probably been a lifetime of looking for love in all the wrong places, Terry Fox the Chilean street dog took a chance on us and finally found what he's been looking for all these years — with Yasmin, Boxie and Oscar.


Cervinia/Zermatt Summer Notes


Our 2016 summer camp in Cervinia/Zermatt saw particularly good conditions and the overall progress of our young athletes. We set the bar high with a mix of talented new coaches and experienced ex-racers, and the trainees responded... Jordan's Mighty Minis, Brad's Bashful Boys, Nat's Groovy Girls and Conrad's Funky FIS Team, all made the most of the opportunity and the experience. Only one day of bad weather, so no complaints there. We had Steevo on Strength & Conditioning, and Lynn Mill as a superstar guest coach alongside two heroes of GB ski racing, Martin Bell and Alain Baxter, the only British men to have posted multiple top 10 results on the Alpine World Cup tour.* 


Housemum Alison Rankin oversaw proceedings with customary calm and good sense and we were delighted to welcome Martine Laughland to the BSA pastoral team for an exciting season ahead.


Congratulations to all the athletes and many thanks to the BSA Cervinia staff from Dom & Malc, The Management.


* Martin now coaches at the prestigious Vail Academy and Alain runs the best boot-fitting shop west of the Alps. (Watch out for their youngsters, by the way. Reece Bell is getting pretty speedy as she hits her final season before FIS, and young Kerr Baxter is a dynamo, always first up the hill and last off.) 

Jake Doyle laying down clean tracks
on his GS boards

Luca and Oli mugging for the camera

credit to Andrew Laughland for a fuzzy shot
outside the Sertorelli. 
Back row: Brad, Steve, Alain, Jordan, Conrad, Malc, Martin
Front Row: Ali, Lynn, Natalia, Martine


Monday 22 August 2016

Stelvio Summer Report

The first training camp of the BSA's summer program was on the Stelvio glacier in the Lombardy region of Northern Italy.  The Passo del Stelvio is the second highest paved pass in the Alps and is a very popular pass for tourists and cyclists alike with the border of Switzerland a mere 200m away.
However we were not there for the driving, instead we were more interested in the cable car station across the road and the glacier it lead to.

The journey started differently for everyone involved. With coaches coming in from Canada and London, and athletes coming from France, Italy and the UK, many miles were covered to coordinate the logistics of setting up camp. By the time the team were all together we opted to stay lower in altitude at the BSA's English Champs base (the National Park hotel) in Isolaccia.  This gave us all time to acclimatise, organise the kit, goal set for the camp and recover from the travel.

A couple of days in and we moved base up to the Pass itself moving into the Pirovano hotel at 2757m.  This eliminated the 48 daily hairpins on the drive up the north side of the pass and focused the athletes for their high performance camp.  It was a small team, 10 athletes in total, 2 coaches, 60 gates and a training lane all to ourselves. The snow cover was brilliant, mainly due to the wintry weather conditions that we were experiencing at the start of the camp, and the turn-around was exceptionally quick. It was also quiet and easy to get some of the more interesting training areas to ski within. Stelvio has 3 main training lifts, with flat to steep terrain, speed lanes and lanes filled with rollers.







The team had a number of days on the slalom skis first working on the goals we had agreed through panelled slalom courses.  These were very effective sessions building on some foundations that set the athletes up for the rest of the camp.  Days on the hill are quite short at this time of year so the early afternoons were spent eating from the Italian buffet to refuel and resting before the afternoon dryland session.  At that altitude it was really easy to get the heart rate up so we tended to opt for intense but short sessions training a variety of types of fitness without over-tiring.  The gym and the swimming pool in the hotel helped us out a lot.  Each evening started with video analysis and a team meeting before eating a 4-course dinner.  The athletes could slot in tuning their skis wherever suited them best and early nights were had by all.

In following this daily routine, before we knew it we were over halfway through our 10 training days and decided to take a day off the skis to recover for the final push of Giant Slalom skiing.   We took the athletes down out of altitude for the day and drove over to the tax free town of Livigno for some active recovery activities.  The final GS stint whizzed past by training a series of gradients, sets and by adjusting to new equipment for many.  The coaches were really happy with the success of the camp, the focus of the athletes and changes that were made.  Many of the athletes travelled back home and a handful went back to the new BSA base (Hotel Miage) in Aosta for some R&R before the Cervinia summer camp started a couple of days later.  For a taster of what happened there, check out the video in the post below.....