Training and Racing at Whistler

After his week at Hurricane Race Camp in Loveland, Colorado last month, Cory kicked off his local training and racing season with 2 days of training and racing with Whistler Adaptive Sports Programs at Whistler-Blackcomb.

Working with a new coach, Luke Hadley (who's father was a teammate of Nancy Greene in the 70s...and Cory has met Nancy Greene a couple of times now...the Canadian ski racing community is a small one!), Cory participated in a Gatebusters session on the Dave Murray run at Whistler - the same run that was used during the 2010 Olympic Games last February.



It was Luke's first time at working with a disabled athlete and it worked out really well. Luke was impressed with Cory's skiing ability and his willingness to learn - his coachability - and by the end of the day Luke was saying he was looking forward to working with Cory more often.

One of our objectives when Cory went to Loveland was to improve Cory's racing by one second - find a way to make Cory faster by one second through an average race course. Over the last couple of years, Cory has been neck-and-neck with his main competitors at Special Olympics, so going into any given race it's difficult to say who will come out the winner.

It will likely be only the winner of the qualifying races next March that will be invited to the Nationals in 2012, so we figured if Cory could find a way to become one second faster, then he would have a much better chance of qualifying and give him a larger margin for a small error.

After Coach Luke had worked with Cory for the day, he said that Cory could easily improve by one second with more coaching and training, and that's on top of what Cory learned at Loveland. So that was great for Cory to hear, giving his confidence a real boost and motivating him even more to keep working hard at improving his skills.

Coach Luke continued to work on the same things as Cory worked on at Loveland, though he has now mastered keeping his feet further apart. Luke told him to keep his hands out in front of his body and to move his body further forward, and to work harder at getting up on the edge of his skis.

And we can see some of that work in these videos:









On this day the training course was not directly accessible by chair lift, so there was a fair amount of walking uphill involved. It made for a tiring day, so by 2pm we're on our way back down...and Whistler is covered in snow.








Later, a walk through Whistler Village all dressed up for Christmas:





The next day is a chance for Cory to put his learning to work, in the first Kokanee race of the season. This series of races is held on most Thursdays during the winter at Whistler-Blackcomb. It is open to all and Cory is often the only racer with a disability. Racers earn points depending on their finish, with 100 points to the winner. The racer with the most points at the end of the season is the Kokanee champion. Cory normally finishes in last place in his age group (19-29), so we jokingly set an objective of not finishing last and picking up a few points!

Looks like a good day for a race:




Cory having a good look at the 25 gates on this Giant Slalom race course set out on the Gandy Dancer run on Blackcomb mountain:




This day, Cory is working with Sammy Kent, a former Canadian ski team member and here they are working together during the pre-race course inspection:





And some warming up just before it's Cory turn to race:




And his first run...1:06.76....though I picked a poor location, shooting a video right into the sun:





And then his second run, a much improved 1:00.24, the most improvement of any of the 52 racers entered:




So a combined time of 2:07.00, and 8th out of the 11 racers in his age group, so Cory doesn't finish last and picks up 40 points! And Coach Sammy agrees with Coach Luke that Cory can easily find another second or two with more coaching and training. Cory will need to keep working on his stance, especially moving his hips forward, and will need to learn to take a more aggressive line through a race course.

A good couple of days of training & racing. Next week, a return trip to Whistler is in the plans, perhaps working with Coach Luke again but this time with Whistler Mountain Ski Club.

Then the first week of January kicks off the official training season for both Special Olympics and Vancouver Adaptive Snow Sports, so it will be 3 times a week of training or racing, in preparation to those qualifying races in Kelowna on March 4 and 5.

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