Special Olympics Ski Racing - Finally, Great Training Closer to Home!

For those of you that have read this entire blog and are familiar with our story (that may just be me of course!), you'll know that last summer we trekked to Mount Hood in Oregon to get Cory some good racing coaching and training. It certainly was a great week at Hurricane Ski Camp, but a 7 hour drive does make it a bit inconvenient.



Thanks to a question from the dad of another athlete in Special Olympics, we learned about VASS - Vancouver Adaptive Snow Sports. This organization has been mostly focused on physically-disabled skiers, but recently added a program for those with developmental disabilities too.



As it turns out, one of Cory's main rivals, Jesse, trains in the VASS program too. Cory beat Jesse in the Super G and Giant Slalom at the Provincial Games in February 2007, but Jesse beat Cory in the slalom. And having seen Jesse now at the VASS program, it's clear that he has progressed significantly since last year and Cory may now have fallen behind.



This is a fairly intensive program compared to what Cory is used to - Thursday nights from 6:30pm to 8pm and Saturdays from 8am to 3pm - all of it on Grouse Mountain on the north shore near Vancouver. It's about an hour's drive from our house, so it means an early start on Saturday mornings. All in addition to Cory's Special Olympics program on Monday nights on Cypress Mountain.



There's about 10 athletes in the program, but only about 6 or 7 seem to participate in any particular session. Cory of course, never misses a session - once he commits to a program he simply refuses to miss any part of it.



There's been two coaches - Carley and Roy - and they have both been outstanding with Cory. He has not just enjoyed it, but he has already learned a lot and is obviously a better racer because of it.



The program actually started back in mid-January, but by the time we found out about it and checked it out one night, it was early March. So thanks to Carley, we were allowed to join about mid-way through. Cory has already said he wants to be there for the whole program next January.



Here's a couple of photos of Cory working with Carley:

























And a photo of the team, taken at the top of Grouse Mountain, with Vancouver down below:

And a pristine run on an early Saturday morning,

And now Cory doing the "boot touch" drill - touching his downhill boot with one arm while holding the other arm up and away from his body - and me following down the run, and Carley carrying the racers' poles.

Here's Cory going through a slalom course - he's learned to keep his shoulders pointed towards the bottom of the hill, rather than pivoting his body, and he does a really good job here keeping his hands out in front.

And a couple more videos of Cory in gate training

So it's now mid-April 2008, and Cory's VASS program is complete, except for a final race. On Saturday, April 19, on Whistler, Cory will participate in a Provincial Championship Giant Slalom with VASS, which he is really looking forward to. We're hoping the race will be on the Dave Murray downhill where we watched the World Cup Giant Slalom last February. We all think it would be cool for Cory to race on the same course as the World Cup, and Cory's mum would be able to watch from the finish line area.

Cory has really enjoyed VASS, and he certainly plans to participate next year. It'll mean a busy 3 months from January to March with skiing 3 times a week, but he's getting excellent coaching and has improved signicantly even with just 6 weeks of the program.

It probably means that we don't need to go back to Hurricane at Mount Hood this summer, which is disappointing to me, since that was such a great moment in time for me as Cory's dad. But if Cory can get the coaching and gate training here locally, it really doesn't make much sense to travel to Oregon for a week.

So I'll update again after the Provincial Championships on April 19.

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