U.S. women revel in all-access pass to the Chilean high country

U.S. women revel in all-access pass to the Chilean high country{mosimage}Focusing during the early part of the preseason on conditioning and strength rather than getting back on snow, U.S. alpine women are putting the finishing touches on a second straight “outstanding” on-snow camp, according to head coach Patrick Riml.

“I was a little nervous, but they’re so focused and so professional, and all their conditioning work is paying off on snow.”

The women, who were on snow in New Zealand last month, complete this camp at Portillo, Chile, in the Andes at the end of the week. They’ll have more than two weeks to recover at home, then both the tech team (slalom/GS) and speed (downhill/super G) will head to Austria in mid-October for the final overseas camps.

Midwinter conditions greeted the American skiers, who shared the Andean resort with the Canadian men and women before taking over the entire mountain in the last week when the Canadians headed home.

“We’ve had bluebird days every day and we’ve gotten in so much training,” reported Chip White, who’s on Alex Hoedlmoser’s speed coaching staff. “It’s been an outstanding camp. Frankly, some of the girls are starting to get tired because they’ve been skiing so much. What a luxury to have so much great skiing.”

Riml said the downhill course, where they also ran super G, “is more like spring conditions, and then there’s full-on winter conditions on the other side of the mountain where we trained slalom and GS and also did some super G. So, they’ve run under a lot of different conditions. I’m very happy with how things are going. It’s outstanding.”

The women did dryland training until the New Zealand camp “and you get a little nervous when you don’t ski in May, June and July,” Riml explained, “because you don’t know what snow situation you’ll find. But these two camps have been perfect. The weather’s been great and the snow’s been great. Like Chip said, we didn’t lose a single day … and we’ve had the mountain to ourselves for the last week or so. We got plenty of runs in, for sure. We’ve been lucky.”

The coaching staff is pleased with all the girls, Riml said, “because they’ve gotten after it, been so motivated and determined to get the most out of every run. You love to see that as a coach. They worked hard in the preparation for these camps, and the conditioning is paying off because they’re able to have more runs, recover faster … and they can go to that extra run and there’s no breakdown in their performance because of fatigue. Conditioning is paying off every day.”

Riml singled out Resi Stiegler for marked improvement in her speed training — “and that should really help her GS because she’s getting more and more comfortable with speed … and it’ll help in combined, too. She hasn’t run downhill on the World Cup, but we’ll slowly move her into that.”

He and White also noted Lindsey Kildow sparkled in her speed work. “They’ve all done well,” White said, “but Lindsey’s been ripping it up from the start. She’s at a different level.”

When they go to Europe next month, Hoedlmoser will take the speed group to the Pitztal Glacier while the tech group under new-this-season head coach Chris Knight will be in Soelden, Austria.

The World Cup season begins Oct. 28-29 with men’s and women’s giant slalom on the Rettenbach Glacier above Soelden, followed by slaloms for men and women Nov. 11-12 in Levi, Finland, before the World Cup heads to North America. The men race downhill and super G Nov. 25-26 at Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies; the women run a GS and slalom Nov. 25-26 during the Aspen Winternational in Aspen, Colorado. The annual Visa Birds of Prey races Nov. 30-Dec. 3 in Beaver Creek, Colo., will include a DH, slalom, giant slalom and a super combined, i.e., shortened downhill and one run on a shortened slalom course in the same day. The women will run two downhills and a super G Dec. 1-3 at Lake Louise before the tour returns to Europe for the winter.

The World Championships are scheduled Feb. 3-18 in Are, Sweden, the first time Sweden has hosted an alpine worlds since the 1954 championships in Are.

— USSA