The roots

Today the so called club championships were organized. At this anual competition, the atmosphere is always amazing. It is a day when many of the skiers and non-skiing members of the club come together for an amazing and chill day, with a little bit of pressure. There is one winner for under 17 and over 17 iin each discipline and of course a club champion, who wins overall, regardless of the age category. I was under 17 last year and this was my first year over 17, so I was unable to defend my titles. It was an exciting and close competition between the people who would follow my steps. It feels great to be able to motivate the younger skiers and know that they look up to me. This year it was a clean sweep for Matthijs Korsten, but I am sure even more pressure will be added next year, seeing the improvements everyone is making. For myself it wasn't a great start in

my new category. I wasn't able to run my first pass, so in slalom I ended very low, and more importantly with very little overall points. Therefore, my shot at overall champion had flown out the door very early. It's a good learning opportunity on how to deal with that dissapointment fast enough to focus on tricks and jump with a

new positive attitude. This is what makes these championships good, apart from the sphere, since there is a little pressure of wanting to perform and being overall champion, but it is not an official competition, due to which the scores don't matter very much. Ideal for learning how to deal with the stress and dissapointments of competition in  an easier way.

Leaving the slalom results behind and losing the pressure of even trying to become the clubchampion, I focussed on tricks. My hands run went well the first time round andfelt stable. Then I fell on my first trick in toes. This is something that reoccurs too much in my opinion. Not too long ago I was doing the toehold 360 (TO) so perfectly and almost never fell, not even in competition. Now it's not stable enough anymore, wich is unacceptable for a first trick. Luckily in the second round of tricks, I did the same in my hands run as the first round, and I had a new shot in the toeholds. The TO went well this time, there was no doubt that I might have fallen. This felt good to do again. Afterwards I was only able to do 2 other tricks bfore falling again, but I am sure this will come back soon.

The last event of the day was jumping. Since there were not many jumpers, we seized the rare opportunity of having the ramp ready and clean and a good boat driver to jump a little more often than the usual 3 times. We decided on 1 test jump and 3 scoring jumps. For me these felt good and safe, but there were no jump bouys, which made the timing really difficult. Also the scoring system was not very professional, we took pictures and measured the distance that it looks from the 15, 20 or 25 meter bouy. It was calculated that my jumps were around 23/24 meters. If this is accurate, I'm happy with the score. Many jumps were too

early, but since there was no reference I couldn't compensate much for the timing. Furthermore there was no switch, this device tells the boat to provide more power when the skier pulls. After the competition I decided to do 5 more jumps to train a bit with my trainer here. These jumps were solid too, so the end of the day was much better than the start.

This was all for this weekend, but I realized I forgot one thing I wanted to say about last weekend. At that competition, there was a head-to-head slalom. This was for the best 16 skiers of the competition, men and women combined, so I was already glad to be selected. You ski immediately against one other person and the score doesn't matter for anything else than beating that one person. In the first round, everyone starts at 18 meters and their own maximum speed. This was an advantage for me, since I always start on that, whereas my competition was used to starting at a shorted line length. We both cleared the 18 meter pass, after which my competition fell at 1.5 at 16. This meant that I only had to do 2 at 16 and then stop. I was doing well and after the second bouy I turned too hard, thinking about going to three. What I should have done was turn slowely and go back to between the boat, because that would give me 2 bouys at 16, getting me through to the next round. I had not really thought this through before hand, since I had never done a head-to-head slalom before. I think its a really fun concept and now I understand how to get further, for the next time! :)

Coming week I will be training for the last competition for the Dutch team. It will be the Dutch against the Belgians, which I hope we will be able to win. However, more importantly, I hope to ski some good scores, especially in slalom.