Jimmy's Blog

Where did I grow up skiing?

2008-02-21T07:12:00.000-08:00

I grew up skiing from the age of three at a little place in Richmond, Vermont called Cochran’s Ski Area.

It was built (or rather scraped together) by my grandparents Micky and Ginny. My grandfather was a tinkerer, a lover of all things mechanical, and an avid skier.

When he put up his own homemade rope tow in 1961, he was just as excited as his four young children. I can imagine my grandfather’s shear joy, standing atop his hill enjoying the background thrum of the tow’s VW motor, watching the little whipper snappers ride his tow.

The back yard ski hill also became a training venue for his kids (my dad and his three sisters). There they would spend evenings out under the lights running gates. Eventually they became world-class ski racers. They were each Olympians, and one even a gold medalist.

Their accolades are many, and I could write on and on about them, but the little family ski hill is what I want to get at. Anyway, my grandfather loved those winter evenings so much he eventually decided to give up his engineering job and run the ski area full time. It was a mom and pop operation in the truest sense.

My grandfather would often pull the school bus out of the muddy parking lot with a come-along, and when my grandmother wasn’t teaching kids how to ski, she would be finding an extra pair of mittens for the kids that forgot theirs. I was a whipper snapper riding his rope tow about 23 years after that first season, and I will always remember the satisfaction he radiated as he stood at the top of the lift (where he had to be ready to cut power if kids piled up, as they often did).

Lap after lap, my grandfather would shoot me this cartoon-like expression where his eyes got really big and his jaw would drop… “you again!” He definitely loved what he did, though that legendary Irish gruffness would occasionally come out (he was a die hard Red Sox fan so he undoubtedly had some repressed anger). If you rode his T-bar incorrectly, he would lose it (while taking the lords name in vain of course). Something like, “STAY IN THE TRACK! BLASPHEMY, BLASPHEMY!” That’s the censored version.

Apparently my cousin Roger’s first full sentence as an infant was an approximation of one of these tirades. Aunt Marilyn must have been so thrilled… “Oh how wonderful! He swore just like Dad!”

As a grandchild of Ginny and Micky (or Mimi and Grampa), I was like royalty (a weak approximation anyway) at the ski hill. For example, lunch at the snack bar was free: all I could eat burgers and soup! It was pretty sweet, though candy bars were off limits. My grandmother made sure of that. I never understood why, but rules were rules and she was not to be trifled with.

Another rule she enforced was a ban on ski jumps of any shape or size (My grandfather fully supported this jump prohibition). We could go tucking straight into the woods at a bajillion miles an hour, breaking branches and limbs, and yet break no rules. But if there was a pile of snow that even hinted at a “you know what,” Mimi would have a conniption. Like Bill Cosby’s description of a conniption: “Her face split! And the skin came of off her face so there was nothing except the skull! And orange light came out of her hair! It lit all around and fire shot from her eye sockets and began to burn my stomach!”

OK, it wasn’t as bad as the vivid picture Bill paints, but she really did hate jumps. We still found ways to get hurt of course, but we were discreet about it.

I inherited a love for skiing that stems straight from that little hill in Vermont. It’s still by far my favorite place to ski. Traveling all over the world ski racing has yet to turn up its equivalent.

OK, so I’m just a little biased.

What goes through my head on race day?

2008-02-10T16:42:00.000-08:00

Race day: just thinking about it makes my heart beat a little faster. The day of a ski race is a day that I both dread and eagerly anticipate. On the one hand you get to charge down a steep, icy pitch on your best and favorite pair of skis. On the other hand, you have to wrestle with laws of physics that don’t really care who you are and what happens to you. Plus, it’s usually quite cold and skin-tight suits are not designed to be warm.

But for me, the hardest thing is the anticipation. As any ski racer (and especially their parents) can tell you, there are long hours of tedium involved with ski racing.

An all day long affair boils down to about two minutes of actual racing. That’s a lot of open time where it’s easy to worry about silly things like how difficult the course seems to be, or how badly I want to beat that kid who always picks on me, or how I really don’t want to make a fool of myself in front of so many people. Yikes! It’s pretty obvious that these thoughts don’t make anyone a faster ski racer and can sometimes work to the contrary.

My grandmother used to always tell me in her best grandmotherly voice, “don’t worry about the outcome Jimmy… just focus on the task at hand.”

Sure, just ski, relax, have fun. That’s a wonderful goal. Especially since skiing is just a very fun sport after all. And that idea is the basis for how I try to approach the sport.

But, I still get nervous sometimes. I can’t help it. It just sneaks up on me. That’s when I reach into my handy bag of tricks and pull out my magic method of completely disposing of stress.
I would really love to explain how it works but there’s just one problem: THERE’S NO SUCH THING!

That’s been an important realization for me. Nerves are a part of the process. Sometimes I will be edgy (ha) at a ski race. Sometimes I will be scared. OK. Now what?

Here’s what I do. It’s not a perfect solution, but it does help to keep those inner demons at bay. First, I go free ski. Free skiing distracts me from the race itself, gives me a chance to get used to the snow, light, etc., and it’s fun.

Some world cup racers like to save every bit of energy for their race run. They “relax” in the lodge right up until race time. I think the extra effort of going out and hustling down the hill a few times is worthwhile even if it means I’m a little tired for the race. I just get too antsy sitting around.

The other way I reduce anxiety is by picking one simple thing to focus on during my actual race run. This could be something technical, like arcing the beginning of every turn, keeping my hands up, or pole planting. It could also be something tactical, like making sure not to sit back going onto a steep section of the course (I’m pretty sure Bode never uses that one).

By giving my conscious brain one task, I distract it and thus allow my subconscious brain the freedom to handle the much more complicated part (actually skiing… but sometimes I wonder if it forgets now and then!).

One last thing: If for some reason I find that at the end of the day I didn’t quite achieve all that I had secretly hoped I would (like you skied on the wrong side of every gate and just thought the course was really straight) I try to remember what Linus told Charlie Brown after he misspelled “beagle” in the spelling bee. He said, “I suppose you feel you let everyone down. And you made a fool out of yourself and everything. But did you notice something Charlie Brown? The world didn’t come to an end.”

What is it like to be on the U.S. Ski Team?

2008-02-03T13:03:00.000-08:00

The U.S. Ski team sometimes has a reputation for being a bunch of self interested, spoiled, egotistical knuckleheads.

This is certainly what I thought of the team back when I first started to encounter its members as a junior racer. The reality of course is far from that.

The Ski Team (is it egotistical that I capitalized it?) is made up of a bunch of dedicated, hard working, mostly humble knuckleheads who love to ski and absolutely love to compete. Especially compete, even when it’s uncalled for. One recent competition was to see who could rapidly nibble down an entire breadstick at dinner in the least amount of time (bonus points for highest number of bites per inch). Ted Ligety won that battle as I recall.

Anyway, I never thought ski teamers knew how good they really had it. This harsh judgment I once made was coupled with a promise that if I were to ever find myself in that same position, I would relish each and every day. Well as luck (and lots of squats) would have it, I now get to wear that fancy Spyder coat. And luckier still, I get to write about the whole shebang via this here blog. I guess anything is possible with enough squats/trips to the thesaurus.

On a typical day, I get to ski in some of the most beautiful places in the world on equipment that masters racers would literally kill for.

My skis are waxed and tuned every night by a factory rep named Bernie (who also happens to be my favorite unofficial coach. Ironically he smokes a pack a day but never blows smoke up my ass). I run gates set and pulled by coaches who also manage to shoot video, set up timing, fix the timing when it invariably stops working, replace broken gates, carry coats, slip the ruts, yell at me for not drinking that water bottle they brought to the hill, and oh yeah, actually coach.
After a morning of gate training and free skiing, it’s lunch, followed by nothing, then dryland (knock down, drag out competition in some form), followed by nothing, then dinner, followed by nothing.

There’s a lot of open space on the schedule. Keep in mind this is just a typical day, a good day among lots of good days. A great day is far beyond. Say, exceeding my expectations on race day, or skiing run after run of fresh powder because the local Austrians prefer to stay on the groomers, or driving that rental car far up that river in New Zealand (I still smile thinking of that day).

All the little things are taken care of. You would think this creates an environment where the athlete is left to focus solely on racing. Not true, my coaches still remind me sometimes, “Jim, don’t think, don’t worry, just race.”

So in the end I don’t have to worry about anything at all (though I still get nervous about racing, but don’t tell anyone). This leaves me with lots of spare time to ponder how good I have it, but not right now, because I have to go DOMINATE Erik Schlopy in ping-pong…