Utah Olympic Park – NorAms

 

7th-9th February 2013

Harry Gillam reports: Monday 8.30am UK Time.

It’s been the fastest turn round ever – just arrived back in UK in transit at Manchester on the way to Russia. We finished the last of the UOP NorAm competitions on Saturday evening and I flew out early Sunday morning heading for the Sochi World Cup.

It’s been a mixed week, not helped by the changing weather. We were straight back to training at the start of the week, which began with the rebuilding of the ramps and air site – more shaping, sliding and chopping! We started this on Sunday after the Deer Valley World Cup had finished and had Monday off to rest.

Tuesday went ok, the weather was good with not much wind and training went quite well. I managed to get my top end doubles in as well – landed but could have skied away better. Still need to polish them up a bit more.
On Wednesday the weather started to change later in the day, but I still trained and had a good morning, warming up through my doubles.

Thursday was the first competition day; we had no new snow yet, but it was due, the wind was changeable. After the first round in the competition I was lying in 3rd place and had a good judged score for my double Lay-Full of over 78 points, but then went big with my double full. I landed but didn’t ski away so blew the place and finished 15th out of 18. Disappointed, but still… tomorrow is another day and I walked away uninjured to jump another day.

By Friday, the weather had started to change and it was windy and gusty. Still training went okay and that continued through into the competition. I agreed with my coach which jumps I was going to perform as the wind was challenging and thankfully, it worked out with a good result – I placed 7th out of 16 and got a judged score total of over 148 points! My coach was pleased as he thought I jumped well in a very challenging wind – typical of the UOP! Now I just needed to take that through to the last day… but the snow arrived!

Saturday was not going to be a good day; the snow had begun dumping and it was windy. We even discussed cancelling the competition and just going skiing! All the time, it was snowing and the wind was just blowing it round in circles, visibility was poor – what a change from Tuesday! Today you couldn’t see the ramps and had to look for the marking of the top corners. The fresh snow was making everything slow and on the inrun you could just about manage 57 / 59kph and that was just enough to get you to the knoll… so slow! I only did a couple of training jumps and had to get friends to ski some tracks on the inrun and try to pack the snow as it dumped down. In the competition, I took off but couldn’t see a thing. It was all down to luck really and it didn’t help that the landing area was short with a barrier around it. There were quite a few injuries once again and some jumpers went over the barrier if they didn’t turn fast enough. I eventually finished with a 13th place out of 16 – we should have gone skiing!