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The Secret Weapons in Aspen
World Cup speed skier and personal serviceman, Sam Morse, reporting on the Aspen World Cup taking place earlier this month. It was a great weekend of racing in front the home country crowd with four top fifteen results made by US athletes over the course of the event. Legend, Steve Nyman performed his retirement run making the weekend extra special for the tribe of American Downhillers. I was fortunate enough to ski to my potential and contribute to these results with a 14th place starting with bib 38 in Saturday’s downhill. Before I get into my secret weapons in Aspen I would like to take you through the course a little and set the scene of the day. The downhill course starts out with a very critical forty plus seconds of gliding over rolls, jumps, side hill traverses, and even a couple of slightly uphill sections. Then the floor drops out from underneath you as you break over the Aztec pitch which consists of four steep and demanding downhill turns before carrying your speed around a big airplane turn and onto a flat road. From there to the finish it is a moderate pitch with pieces of terrain on every gate the cause you to loose snow contact and a slope aspect change towards the east along with a lower elevation that makes for slushy conditions on the last couple of turns. Now that you have a sense of the course let's talk about the weather of the day, the skies were somewhat overcast and temperatures warming throughout the day with a slight breeze on the top flats. The ringers of the day, Kilde, Odermatt, and Crawford, laid down some killer runs and almost everyone seemed to be off the pace in the first thirty seconds up top to take down Kilde.
My focus for the run was quite simple really, tuck more and keep the skis running clean down the pitch. I knew the top flats had been slowing down with the warming temperatures, but I also knew I had rocket ships on my feet and that this was my chance to separate from the field. After my break through results in Val Gardena back in early December I race waxed the skis the night after the race with a relatively generic temperature range. Throughout the season I carried this pair of skis with me to each race, but was waiting for an opportunity where I really thought the skis would make a big difference. With most of the World Cup Downhills being injected with water to make for icy conditions the skis tend to make less of a difference. The time came in Aspen at the beginning of March to finally unleash my secret weapons. The key to saturation is marination, the longer the wax sits on the skis the more time, opportunity, and varying temp ranges the wax is exposed to. This allows for marination and full saturation of the base, with the wax sinking deep into the pours of the base structure. After three months of marination I simply scraped and brushed the skis thoroughly and sent it! I knew the temp range I had waxed was within reason and to miss a little cold is always better when doing this.
I kicked out of the gate hard and sunk into my lowest tuck, just barely catching a glimpse of the course out of the top of my goggles. At the first split I was second, only to Kilde. Then at the next split marking the end of the flats, I was winning, with green lights on the board the secret weapons had worked. I broke over the pitch and kept my turns clean yielding me a third place at the next interval, however I was a bit late and not able to take maximal speed onto the road. With the bottom part of the course having significantly warmed up and many athletes DNFing in this section I knew I just needed to make it to the finish line. I tactically adjusted my line up the hill a little bit, taking less risk, and making it to the finish clean landing me in 14th place. This was an incredible move up and provoked an electric response from the crowd. I hope this tale of my secret weapons encourages you to push the status quo of accepted practices and think outside the box to what your next secret weapon could be. See you on the slopes! -Moose
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