We arrived in San Candido, Italy after a short training camp, which took place in Hintertux, Austria and a Europa cup held at Benny Raich’s home mountain of Jergenz. Thank god I had the Europe cup to work out all the loose ends cause I was a mess. The course was fairly tame other than a kicker shooting us onto a fall away turn running at 80 km/h. Weather conditions were tough with limited visibility and high winds. A few mishaps in the start along with a broken pole on course and failing to go around the second last gate while leading the small finals were the highlights of my day. This race definitely wasn’t one for the books but I’m glad we had the opportunity to get over the nerves and equipment issues before starting the World Cup season.

The organizers learned from the mistakes from the previous year and built a ripping course, which flowed perfectly from each turn and feature. Every jump had the perfect landing. If you skied the course right, you could get away with hardly making a sound, other than the slight chatter from each edge rattling through the holes in a turn.

The results from qualification day put me in 8th place. I was paired with the 1st, 9th, and 16th qualifiers from the day before. I advanced onto the semi round with a few bobbles but still finished in an advancing position. Semi’s was a match up with qualifiers 1st, 3rd, 5th and 8th. I had last lane choice and managed to fight my way from the outside to slide contently into second position. I advanced onto the finals along with Anna Holmlund (SWE), Fanny Smith (SUI), and Heidi Zacher (GER). Third lane choice was a slight disadvantage but instead on focusing on the negative I decided to focus on what was positive. I wasn’t the strongest out of the start but I could absorb the first feature better than any girl in the field. This gave me a good chance of getting out in the top two. The gate dropped and I exploded forwards with all my might.

A few strong skates and a quick pre jump over the first abrupt roller was good enough to slip in behind Anna. I was on her tails the entire run, waiting eagerly for her to slip up so I could make the pass. I was stepping over her skis left right and centre but never got the opportunity to edge my was in front of her. Second place was going to have to do for the day!!