Women's Giant Slalom World Championships From San Candido, Italy
by Peter Foley
(January 21, 1997)

Sondra won today and that rules. After the first run she held only a .02 lead over Frances Carinne Ruby, When Carinne finished her second run she was in the lead by over a second, but Sondra came down and smoked her by 1.27 seconds. She totally let it rip on the second run and trusted her abilities. I'm so proud of her.

I've been delinquent on my updates because I fried my modem, but here's a rundown on what's been happening. After our seven day Christmas break we traveled to the Grand Prix at Snowmass and things didn't go so well at all. In the men's GS we held 1st 2nd and 4th after the first run, but on the second run everything fell apart. Jacoby was able to salvage a 3rd but that was it. Ross rode great in the half pipe and consistently scored the second highest scores all day, but he met Todd Richards, the eventual winner in the round of 8 and so was forced to settle for 5th.

From Aspen we traveled to Lennggries, Germany and things continued to go poorly. No one was riding particularly well, although Anton had a good Slalom race and finished 4th.

The conditions had been so bad for training on our first trip to Europe and our travel schedule so hectic, that our technique and confidence was suffering. From Lenngries we traveled to our new secret training spot in Austria and things started to turn around. We had four days of sun and hard snow, and two different training hills to use. We were able to do two sessions a day often with video and timing. We took a day off then raced at Kreischberg Austria the next day. It was a parallel SL.

In the Men's we qualified five athletes in to the round of 16 and Anton finished 4th again. Stacia had a great race and finished 3rd. In the Halfpipe the men dominated. Dan Smith won, Ross was second, and Kinger finished 4th. The weekend was a great confidence booster for everyone and the team is really feeling on top of there boards now. Sondra really got us off to a great start today. Tomorrow is men's GS and

I'm hoping they follow Sondra's lead.

Entry three: Grand Prix at Sugarloaf Maine (12-7-96)