Skyping and Sölden with Caitlin Ciccone

Thanks to Skype video chatting, Ski Racing was nearly in bed with Caitlin Ciccone, Katie Hitchcock and Hailey Duke of the U.S. alpine team. The girls — who are in Sölden, Austria, training at a glacier camp through Oct. 22 — were Skyping Ski Racing from their hotel beds on Monday.
    Through video chat, the Europa Cup racers offered quite a tour of their quaint little rooms. There on the wall was their favorite part of the hotel, a modern painting of a nude. Alongside the ends of the black, red and white mural were depictions of male and female anatomy. Lots of laughing was sent from the land of Skype in Austria to Ski Racing headquarters in Salt Lake City, that’s for sure.
    There is another reason for the girls to be giddy. Sölden has snow this year.
THANKS TO SKYPE VIDEO CHATTING, Ski Racing was nearly in bed with Caitlin Ciccone, Katie Hitchcock and Hailey Duke of the U.S. alpine team.
    The girls — who are in Sölden, Austria, training at a glacier camp through Oct. 22 — were Skyping Ski Racing from their hotel beds on Monday. Through video chat, the Europa Cup racers offered quite a tour of their quaint little rooms. There on the wall was their favorite part of the hotel, a modern painting of a nude. Alongside the ends of the black, red and white mural were depictions of male and female anatomy. Lots of laughing was sent from the land of Skype in Austria to Ski Racing headquarters in Salt Lake City, that’s for sure.
    There is another reason for the girls to be happy. Sölden has snow this year.
    "Snow is all the way to the bottom and we don’t have to take our skis off to get to the lift,” Ciccone said.
    According to the crew, last year they had to take off their skis to get to the T-bar, which, mind you, accesses the 10,000-foot high Rettenbach Glacier. For that reason, the opening GS races of the World Cup season were canceled. In late September, Ernst Lorenzi, the chief of press of the Sölden World Cup Opening, told Ski Racing: “We have already twice as much snow now on the glacier than last year at the same time.”
    And that’s good news for racers such as Ciccone, Hitchcock and Duke, even though they likely won’t compete in the GS opener scheduled for Oct. 27-28. Their goal for this camp is to dial in their equipment, and having fast, hard snow is the ingredient they need to make that happen. 
    The girls started training on Sunday, and are now in the midst of a five-day giant slalom training series that they say has started fairly mellow but will ramp up shortly with added course running each day. So far, their typical daily schedule looks like this: Wake up at 7:15 a.m.; eat breakfast at 7:30 a.m.; head to the hill. From the time they arrive until 10:30ish, they do freeskiing or drills, then hit the course for training runs, go back for lunch, have a break, then go to dryland training at 3 p.m. For dinner they get a special treat. The team is staying at a hotel located above women’s head coach Patrick Riml’s parents' place, where they eat every night. “It’s really sweet,” Ciccone said. They eat wienerschnitzel and other Austrian treats.
    Then they go back to the rooms with the human anatomy on the walls. Rest, Skype, MySpace, and repeat the next day.
    The life of a racer at Rettenbach.