Patrick Biggs' Blog

Today I raced in my first Europa Cup of the season. It was a good start finishing in 17th, 4th on the second run. It was a really stacked field, so I was starting almost the same as a world cup (52nd).

The full results can be seen here

I just finished racing in my first world cup GS in several years. My GS skiing has come a long way since the start of the summer where I felt like a skiing giraffe on the longer skis. It takes quite a while to become comfortable at the higher speed and used to the longer turn shape which were quite foreign to me.

All week, the challenging piste in Val D’Isere caused problems for the best in the world with a steep face that never seems to let up from start to finish. What made it rather challenging was more to do with the snow that the actual hill. For some reason, they decided not to inject the entire hill, but only the SG line. This meant for the GS race, we were going from injected gates to soft/grippy snow every few turns as we crossed the SG line. Despite the snow and my late start number (60), I was able to finish 36th. Although I didn’t qualify for the second run, being only 0.3 seconds from the cut was good motivation to keep pushing forward with the GS races. My plan is to race in the next WC GS in Alta Badia on Sunday. For now, I’m close-by racing in some Europa Cup slaloms in the Dolomites.

The biggest disappointment of the weekend was the loss of my team-mate to an ACL injury. JP is Canada’s top GS skier, and with his recent performances, a medal hopeful in Vancouver. In Val D’Isere at the final GS split, he was sitting in 3rd, just .04 seconds behind the leader. We’ll miss having him to chase in training this season. He’s scheduled for surgery this week in London, Ontario.

Since my earlier post last week i’ve had a bit of a change of plans. I will no longer be racing the WC GS in beaver creek. I’ve been shifted to race in the WC GS the following weekend in Val D’Isere. I’m looking forward to a few days off now which I’ve been waiting for since Levi. A little revitalization i think will go a long way in getting me ready for the coming races.

The NOR-AM races went well in Colorado this week. I had some consistent slalom runs against a really stacked Nor-am field finishing in 6th and 7th in the two races. Although I didn’t score the FIS points i was looking for to improve my World Cup start numbers, at least I maintained my top 7 rank in the Nor-Am slalom standings so I will have many opportunities to score some points in the future.

The GS races at aspen were a little disappointing as I skied out in the first race, and hit a rock with my edge in the second run, second day and was unable to continue.

We were up on the hill today in loveland. The race track is the iciest i’ve seen all year. Should be good!

Tomorrow is the last day of MOvember. I’ve done a great job of growing my moe, but a terrible job of raising funds this year. Help me and my team get over $2000 in donations. follow the link here. All donations support prostate cancer research and are tax deductible.

Good news. Because of Robbie Dixon’s stellar breakout result in Solden, Canada was granted another World Cup GS spot at Beaver Creek. To decide the athlete to use this spot, the team ran a race in Panorama a few days ago. I had felt pretty confident the couple of days prior while training GS for the first time in over a month, so I was shooting for the spot. I had a great first run, and a solid second run to finish 7th, enough to take the final position! I look forward to competing in my first world cup GS in 3 years.