January 20, 2010 - Sestriere, Italy

I am so excited! I just got my first World Cup podium of the season today: a 2nd in Downhill here in Sestriere, Italy. What a great day! Plus, we have another Downhill scheduled for tomorrow, so I'm excited for that as well. We've been on the road in Europe for nearly 3 weeks now, racing nearly every day. It's been an incredibly intense schedule. First we were in Roll-Rinn, Austria (not far from Innsbruck). There we had a G.S. and a Slalom. The G.S. went well and the Slalom a little less so. After Roll-Rinn we moved on to Abtenau, Austria (near Salzburg) where we had race after race it seemed. We had a bunch of Slalom and G.S. races and although my Slalom results don't look the best, I was skiing some amazing Slalom there, but it's always pretty tight and crazy with Slalom and mistakes are bound to happen when you're pushing it. So, that's the quick update from Sestriere, Italy. One more Downhill, a super-G and a Super-Combined on the schedule before we head home back to Canada. Thanks for all your support everybody!!

January 1, 2010:

Happy New Year! I can't believe 2010 is finally here. On one hand, it has been a long time in coming, on the other, it means there's really so little time between now and the Paralympic Games in March. I just recently finished my first races of the season in Austria. I got a 2nd in G.S. in Kuthai (photo attached) which was great. I also got a 4th in Slalom (also in Kuthai) and a 6th in the opening G.S. in Pitztal. A few of the other races were cancelled due to weather and snow so we didn't get as many starts as we would have liked, but it was still really good to get out there and "get the bugs out," so to speak. It was also - 20 or colder every single day that we were in Austria, so by the end of it we were frozen solid!

Back in October I got to spend the day at President's Choice headquarters in Toronto, along with Larisa Yurkiw of the able-bodied team. It was a fun day (photo attached) but, I'm sorry to say, Larisa has since sustained a knee injury. In fact, including Larisa, 5 members of the able-bodied Canadian team are out for the season due to injury.

I head back to Europe on Monday for World Cup races. First stop, Roll-Rinn/Patscher-Koffel, Austria, then Abtenau, Austria and finally Sestriere, Italy (which I am particularly looking forward to). It's going to be a long stretch on the road, but I really hope it goes well! Happy 2010!