U.S. moguls squad trains on Chile bumps

By Published On: September 14th, 2009Comments Off on U.S. moguls squad trains on Chile bumps

Monday, 24 August 2009 While their World Cup season is still a couple months out, the U.S. Freestyle Moguls Team is officially back on snow as they recently headed to the Southern Hemisphere to train in Chile until the end of August.

“We had a couple good days of training moguls. We got a small air set up so we’ve been jumping and that’s been going well and we all got some really good powder skiing,” said Moguls Head Coach Scott Rawles. “We’re here for ten more days and looking forward to some better weather and some good training for the rest of it.”

After a summer of training at the Center of Excellence and at the water ramps, National Champion Bryon Wilson (Butte, MT) had his to do list ready for when he arrived in Chile.

“This is the first big camp getting on snow. We were working on the water ramps and we’ve kind of been thinking about our turns and stuff that we want to get done here. We simulate what we did on the water ramps here on snow it’s the perfect place to do it,” Wilson said. “I’m working on my double-fulls and the degree of difficulty of my jumps up and then working on getting my turns faster and cleaner.”

When the team arrived in Chile they were pleasantly surprised by a sudden change in weather that, while getting them on the snow, set them back from the bump skiing a few days.

“It snowed seven feet since we’ve been here,” Rawles said. “We actually built a full moguls course and we’re up and going and it snowed another four feet two days ago, which basically buries everything we built.”

One of the most stoked on the pow skiing was 2002 Olympic silver medalist Shannon Bahrke (Tahoe City, CA) who took to her Facebook account to fill the world in on her plans.

“Yep, still snowing! I’ll take some pow runs for you all!!” Bahrke wrote.

But, when it was back to practice Rawles said everyone was ready to put in some serious training time.

“Every athlete has some specific focuses for the camp. We’re still focusing on specific skills and everything.  We are still working on skill acquisition perfecting what we have been working on all summer,” Rawles said.

According to Wilson, time spent in the gym this summer helped him prepare to get the most out of the Chile camp.

“Even today we built a course and I could ski all day, my legs were fine. The training in the gym definitely helped here. So you can go longer, train longer, more qualitity runs,” Wilson said.

With over a week left in the winter conditions, Rawles said the team is improving to the point where they can move ahead in their training before a bigger on snow camp later this fall.

“By the end of the camp we will be looking at more competitions sort of training right at the end of it,” Rawles said. “Then as we roll into our camp in Zermatt in October the focus will be more towards competitive runs.”

For now, it’s the basics in Chile, though. The team returns to the U.S. Sept. 1 before heading to snow again at the end of October.

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About the Author: Eric Williams