This week on Friday I had a bad crash in slalom, after which I wasn’t able to ski on Friday anymore. Usually the first pass after a crash like that I am really careful and hold back because in the back of my mind I am a bit scared. This time, my first set after that crash was on Saturday, on a competition. The focus for this competition was already to find a way to deal with competition stress. For this it was important to set realistic goals and make sure I wouldn’t put too much pressure on myself. I would also work on a ritual before my set that would make me focussed and calm. Due to the crash, I wasn’t sure if I would even be able to ski at the competition. Before the start I wasn’t even sure I would make it past the second bouy, since that is when my shoulder would get pulled. I was oke with stopping if it was hurting too much, since there was a busy period coming up with clinics and competitions. When I noticed at bouy 2 that I was oke to continue skiing I ran my first two passes. The first round, I skied just under my personal best at competition, which was quite surprising considering the circumstances. In the second round I even skied past my pb and raised it by 1.5 bouy to 4@14. I am convinced I
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| On my way to a PB! |
could have done more, but I didn’t want to push it with my shoulder. I also decided to stop after 2 rounds, even though there were 4 rounds in the competition. Hopefully I will be able to put my pb where I want it this year at another competition because I made a wise decision to stop.
Yesterday was a fun day of travelling. I started in Frespech, where the competition was on Saturday. On Sunday I was brought to Toulouse, since my flight leaves from there. This time was probably the fastest and easiest I had ever gotten from Toulouse to Amsterdam. Then in Amsterdam my dad was waiting for me and we went to visit my mom at the rookie competition in Maurik.
It was great to see part of the rookie tour in Maurik, since my first rookie was in Maurik too. Also I did a camp there once, which really inspired me to get further in waterskiing. And of course the Europeans were in Maurik once, which was an inspirational experience. It was really awesome to see the coaches, to whom I could look up to during the camp and in my journey thereafter. They were really impressed about what I had achieved since they knew me. It is good to realise at some points where I’ve come from, because at some points I feel like my progress is not going fast enough.
After the rookie competition I drove to
Handel with my mom, which was fun because I wasn’t allowed to drive for 4 weeks, since I’m 17. I will be in Handel for 2 days for a clinic with world champion Ryan Dodd. It is really amazing that a world champion wants to give a clinic in the tiny country of the Netherlands! He is able to make his living from jumping competition, so he is extraordinarily good in jumping. From the three sets I am doing per day, I will therefore be jumping twice. I’ve already done 2 sets which I can write about, since my blog is a day late. The first set I slalomed, even though I didn’t cut the rope past 16, I thought it was a really good set. I enjoyed the way of coaching and afterwards, my last 16 meter pass felt very easy.
This week many people of the team were back, yet the weather was still beautiful, so luckily it was a week filled with all 3 things I came here for.
I only have one more week to train in Toulouse, next week I will end with a competition in France, after which I will fly back to the Netherlands. Luckily there are many fun things waiting for me at home too, including a very special clinic, which I can’t wait to write about. Even though it feels like the end, especially including the weeks I was here in June, I must keep focussing on skiing here and not let my mind travel back home just yet.
In the past week I have noticed a lot more how independent I have become and how that has been necessary too. This comes in two major parts, first of all, living practically alone, which means cooking, cleaning, chores, etc. But also more importantly in skiing, the past weeks I have had a lot of issues with my equipment. Many fixable things luckily, but that does mean that I have to learn how to fix them. Sadly I also learned to see when something is beyond fixable. All these have been learning experiences for when I will be skiing by myself in university and can’t give all my broken equipment to my parents and get them back fixed. Since many of my friends back home are moving into their own apartments, I realised that this is a nice way to ease into being independent and eventually live alone.
In last weeks blog, I said I hoped to run 13 coming week, since I was close back then. During this week I had a couple of really good shots to run it, but I just came a little short. Now I feel like I have to run it in my last week. I have all the tips and coaching I need, so now I just have to give everything and run it.
I am also working on some new tricks,
like a 540 in toeholds, but also the 540s over the wake in hands. These tricks won’t be ready to be in a run for this years competitions, but they are a good investment for next year. I’ve also been working on pinning other trickers, this means holding the rope when they are in toehold, and of course letting go when they fall. This is good training to see other peoples mistakes, because I make a lot of the same one, and now I see how scary they are. It emphasises the importance of making my tricks clean, so that the pinner does not get too many heart attacks. Since there are some skiers who I can’t pin yet because their tricks are too difficult, I was put back behind the wheel. I drove the boat for one skier so that Vinney could pin. My turns are getting better, but I still have some work to do driving in a straight line, but at least everyone involved made it back to the shore safe and well.
In jumping, I am working on jumping more stable with the sling. It is quite a difference, but I got used to it fast. Now it is especially important to also take advantage of it and not just learn how to land with it. Hopefully if my jumps and cuts are stable enough, I will be able to do a ¾ cut in next season’s competitions.
I'm excited for next weeks competition and will be training towards it in the last week. I hope to ski a PB, even though it might not be as close to my trainings pb as I hope, especially because the first competition after a hard period of training can be difficult.
Today marks the end of another great
week of training in Toulouse. The temperatures have risen a lot compared to last week, with an average of around 30 degrees Celsius. There are generally 3 reasons I went to Toulouse to train, of course the coach, the team and finally the weather. Since a lot of the team went to Italy this week for the European and African Youth Championships, I feel like I have traded the team for the weather. Many people are coming back tomorrow, so next week I’ll let you know if the weather was worse again.
The results at Europeans for my team were quite differing. Sadly there were no finals for the Dutch team, despite great skiing! Luckily tomorrow we can welcome a newly crowned European Champion back at the lake, I’m extremely happy for Léa for winning slalom in her final year under 17!!
In watching these live results I noticed how important it is to be very consistant, because anyone can fall in a pass too early. It is extremely motivating to watch and it emphasizes the importance of experience in competition and consistancy.
I’m really happy with my training results of this week. Since I could watch many of my friends ski at Europeans through live streaming and results and I skied well myself, it has been a really fun week.
First of all, in slalom I am running quite a lot of passes at 14, which I hope will become stable enough to run it in competition in 2 or 3 weeks. I haven’t been working on the 13 meter line a lot, since getting the right feel and being more constant at 14 is very important. However, when I did ski at 13, I did 3 bouys on the first try, which is only 1 less than my pb. To top this off, the pass was looking so good, that Vincent thought I was going to run it. Hopefully next week I can improve just that bit that I need to be able to run my first 13 meter pass. I feel like having a personal best with bouys on 12 meters is a real milestone in slaloming for me.
As I said last week, I’ve been working with a sling in jumping. When I wrote that, I had only practised with it in free skiing, but now, I have been over the ramp with it multiple times. I will not forget the first time quickly, since it actually went really well. I was pretty nervous to go over because you cannot move your arm to help balance the landing. I was thinking about this a lot, but then in the turn Vincent’s hat flew off, which landed right between my feet and I was able to pick it up really
fast whilst skiing. After this, I wasn’t so focussed on the sling anymore, and the jump went really well. Because of the sling, my position in the air was actually better than before, which surprised Vincent, who was quite impressed and we were both very happy with that jump. Hopefully learning a ¾ cut will go just as smooth.
In tricks I’m back to working on my newest tricks, which earlier I could do sometimes, but not always. These are going quite well and I’m excited to work on those and other new ones. What’s surprising, but I’ve said it before, is that I can do tricks that are usually experienced as hard to learn quite easily, but I get stuck on easier basic tricks. This week I’ve heard multiple times from Vincent: I’m very impressed, but I don’t know if I’m more impressed by the fact that you can do the wrap in, wrap out so perfectly, or by the fact that you struggle on the [easier] back to back.
To me, the most important news of this week is that my luggage arrived. It arrived Tuesday afternoon, so I had to ski on borrowed equipment for two days. There wasn’t a lot of difference in the way I skied, but still it is always nice to have your own materials. On the bright side of my missing luggage, I got to go shopping for some new clothes, which would be paid by the airline. However, I’ll still take my skiing equipment over new clothes any day.
At the start of the week, I did a lot of passes at the 16 meter line. This run was already quite stable, but now I can run it very well, even if I make some mistakes throughout. On this line length it is easy to work on some new technical things. For example I started really working on doing a counter rotation in the turn. This allows for much more angle towards the next bouy, so once I really get the hang of this, I’m sure I’ll improve a lot. Now, even though the counter rotation is not perfect yet, I already notice that it helps in my skiing. After practising many 16 meter passes, I went to 14 and I ran it the first try. I hadn’t been able to ski through my 14 for quite a long time, so I really know my technique has improved by practising on 16.
In jump there are also interesting developments, which I’m really excited about and I hope to be comfortable with it soon. First of all, I started skiing with a sling. This is attached around your waist, and you can put your right arm in it. This means that you can handle a lot more pressure with this arm. I noticed that it has made me much stronger and I can create even more speed. The other thing is that I started doing a ¾ cut, instead of a single one. In doing this you first go to the right side of the boat. After gliding there for a few seconds, you turn in and cut from there straight to the left side of the boat, where the ramp is. This naturally creates much more speed than starting from behind the boat and cutting towards the ramp. Even though when learning this I don’t go straight over the ramp, I can feel I have much more speed and thus if I can keep this speed onto the ramp, I will jump much further. I have only spent one set working on this new cut, so I haven’t been over the ramp yet, but I’m extremely excited to find out how that will feel. Though honestly, I’m also a bit nervous because you are taking a lot of speed.
In this first week, I have only done 2 trick sets, due to my missing luggage, amongst other reasons. The sets I did were mainly working on the basics again, because I haven’t been skiing since Europeans. These went fairly well, but I have been warned for very hard work to come. There are a lot of tricks that I am expected to learn during my stay. This means that I should practise a lot on the trampoline and on the ground. This will be very hard work, but hopefully I’ll soon be able to show you guys some new tricks!
Finally I want to wish everyone at the
youth E&A championships a lot of luck, especially my #teamNL and #teamsoubiron team mates! I really wish I could also be there, but I will be following everything from here, whilst training for my own competitions!
This week’s blog is a little bit later
because my flight to Toulouse didn’t go exactly as planned. For starters the flight was delayed by 1 hour, but that isn’t such a big of a deal, the real problem was with luggage. I travel with two check-in bags, one containing my skis and one containing everything else I need to ski, like my ropes, gloves, life jacket, jump suit and helmet, etc. This particular time I also had my baseplates and bindings in my second bag, because the bags can only weigh 23 kilos, and my jump skis with bindings weighs a lot. Usually I take off the heavy jump bindings, but this time I couldn’t unscrew them and I had to take off everything from my other skis to get to the weight I was allowed. Now my ski bag has arrived, but everything else I need to ski has yet to arrive, since that bag was left in Amsterdam. So instead of spending yesterday to assemble my skis and write a blog, I had to plan how I was going to borrow everything from other skiers, so that I can ski today. I ended up using different parts 4 other skiers, but it worked. I hope my own materials will arrive soon so that I can ski with stuff that fits properly.
However, this is not what I planned on blogging about this week. Last week Sunday was called ‘pass the handle’ day. This is a day in which skiers can pass the handle by teaching others how to ski. This is with the goal to grow the sport, which is very necessary. Waterskiing used to be much more popular and well known than it is now, and it would be great if more people knew the sport and funding for the federation grew.
I didn’t have the opportunity to teach anyone how to ski last week, but I believe I can help grow the sport through my blog. I get some great reactions to my blog and one in particular I like to share. There was a girl who contacted me to say she was inspired by my blog to get back to training and also give training to other people. This was amazing to hear, but what makes it more special is that she inspired me in skiing about 4 years ago. She was at my first training camp and she helped me go over the ramp for the first time. It was fun to read back old messages that I sent to her, for example that I was very proud of landing a jump and doing a side slide. These things are not really special to me anymore, but it is a good reminder that at one point, this was all I could do and I was really proud of that. It reminds me to be proud of how far I’ve come already too and helps me see that it is possible to go even further.
Finally, even though it is kind of a rough start to the training in France, without my suitcase, I am very happy to be skiing back here and see everyone!
