Its been a pretty crazy last few weeks here in Europe. There have been many events going on, places to go, people to see, cliffs to jump off...
A couple of weeks ago, we had the only 2 day 4* event in Europe, called the Nendaz Freeride. A two day event means that not only do you have to do a run to qualify for the finals day, but you have to then throw down on finals day too. The scores are not combined (thank god), but it still means you have to be super consistent.
Last season in North America, pretty much all of the competitions were 2 day events. I had a real problem with this, as I found that I would put too much pressure on myself to nail it on finals day and would, unfortunately, blow out in some way.
So, when the Nendaz Freeride came around, I was, needless to say, feeling a tad bit nervous about it. My only goal for this was to put down two clean, consistent runs.
The kiwi crew all rolled up a couple days before the competition in order to get a good look at the faces we were going to be on. The whole team was staying in an apartment just over the road from all of the competition proceedings (thanks Snow Sports NZ for getting us accommodation, let alone in such a prime location!). Nothing beats staying with this amazing group of talented individuals!
It was the morning of inspection day that we woke up to find that the New Zealand Muslim community had been through some very intense trauma and the whole of NZ was reeling in the wake of such an attack. This became the topic of discussion for our whole time at the comp. It was later decided that we would wear black armbands in the finals (if we made it to finals) to show our support of NZ during this hard time.
Inspection day went well, though the weather was largely foggy with flat light. Even with this, we managed to mostly piece our runs together ready for the next day.
Qualification day dawned bright and sunny and we all woke up early to get ready for a big day. Another quick inspection was done before heading up the hot boot-pack to get to the top of the venue. PS walking with a back protector makes for a very sweaty walk!
At the top, it was good vibes all round and everyone seemed pretty positive about the day. I found that this venue wasn't very blind, therefore I could see my run top to bottom and felt pretty confident about where I was going. I also made some last minute changes because of what I saw standing at the top of the venue.
All in all, my run went well and I made it to the bottom in one piece. The venue definitely claimed a few poor souls though with the variable snow conditions.
After our runs, the kiwi crew went for a mission to the finals face for the next day to do an inspection, just in case we made the finals that ran the next day. Lots of photos were taken in the blazing sunshine and we headed back to the apartment to prepare for the bib draw for finals that evening.
At 6pm, we dragged our tired selves over the road to the bib draw to find out who was going onto the next day! After watching an awesome recap video of the qualifications day, they began to read out the names. I was stoked to come away having qualified in 2nd place behind the amazing Caroline Stromberg! Also making it to finals was Finn Duffy, Jamesa Hampton and Sam Good!
Straight afterwards, we went back to begin preparing for day 2...