Benelux

We won a trophy full of beer!

Today the Netherlands became champion of the Benelux since a long time. Despite the fact that you can use your teams' 4 best scores, and there were only 3 Belgians and no people from Luxembourg, we still did extremely well representing our country. With many juniors and seniors banking huge points and also open skiers performing really well. For me personally, the competition included many ups and downs.

I spent the whole week at the competition site to train, since the competition site is conveniently also one of the best training locations in our country and I train here a lot any way. It was all going really well. In slalom, I was running 18, 16 and 14 every set and then I did between 2 and 4 on 13. This gave me a lot of confidence and I was sure I would perform a score on 13 in the competition as well. This was also my goal, because I wanted to show myself that I really got over last years issue of not running 14 in competition, despite running it in training almost consistently. Sadly, in the preliminary round of the competition, I was only able to do 3 at 14. I struggled with the timing of the gate, because it is an 8 buoy course, so when you cut out for the gate, there is a buoy where you want to turn in (the 5th buoy going the other way). At 14 I had a lot of trouble with whether I should go around it or in front of it, because ideally I would go exactly over it, but this will put me off balance. In prelims, I went around, but got stressed in the gate and didn't take enough angle onto buoy 1. In finals, I had less nerves going into my passes, so I had a good rhythm on 18 and 16 and ran them really smoothly. It would've been good for my overall if I ran 14 and put a score on 13, especially since I knew what the others had skied. Going into 14, I decided to try and turn inside of the buoy before the gate, because this had worked well in training. However, this lead to even less angle into 1, and I tried to compensate by turning strong. I turned too much in stead and fell on buoy 1, which cost me the overall women's Benelux champion title.

In tricks, I wanted to do my run the way I intended it, and not switched around like last week. I practised it a lot in training and in my last trick training on Thursday, it went perfectly. I did the beginning sequence of my run extremely steady 4 times in a row. My toes run was really steady as well in training, but it has been in competition as well, since I put the less risky 360 in stead of 540 degree turn in the beginning. I still want to change this for this season, but for now, with a risky hands run, it is better to have a really stable toes run that I can really bank points with. In the prelims, I fell on my first hands trick, so no points. I did my toe run and got all those points, giving me just enough for finals. This meant I was last in for the finals, so I was really happy to get another chance. he next day in finals, I did all my hands tricks, but I felt like maybe not all of them were off the wake. Turns out, the boat was in slalom mode, giving a smaller wake than in tricks mode. Logical therefore, that not all of my tricks were loose from the wake. However, if I asked for a rerun with the boat in trick mode, I would have to do all my tricks again, or lose all my points, and I felt like my run is too risky to try it again. I did all my toe tricks and some of my hands tricks were not credit, so barely 900 points there, still I got enough points to place 3rd on the podium, together with 2 of my team mates from my home club, which was great!

In jump, it was the opposite of tricks and slalom. In the training I was learning some things and had some good jumps, but none of them felt really far, all of them were a bit under my personal best. Then in the prelims, I was still performing under my PB with the furthest score being 23.6m, and my PB is 25.1m. It was the first time I did the 3/4 cut in competition, so I was happy I did that and had 3 safe jumps, but I was confused and mostly frustrated as to why I wasn't instantly breaking my PB, which I did with a single cut, with my faster 3/4 cut. In the finals, after not having done too good in all other events in either round, I was set on a PB. Even before I left I heard the speaker (Talisa), say that my PB was 25.1m, but I was set on breaking it today. I had some extra family members for support here, my aunt, uncle and grandparents came, which was really great and I just went for it. I cut out much harder than any time before and turned into my cut to the ramp later. I kept position and boom, 26.5m, a new PB! I thought to myself, it's oke, a new PB and it's enough, don't expect more and don't take unnecessary risk. I got the tip to lift my right ski a bit whilst waiting to turn into my cut, which meant I had more speed and was later. Another new PB, 27.1, a nice 2 meters more than my last PB! I didn't want to take any more risk, but I tried to do the same as last time and carry my speed waiting for my turn-in. I was even later than before, barely sure that my right ski would make the ramp, but I was fully committed, took the jump, held my position and again, a new PB of 27.6m! 2.5m more than my previous PB and a score that is starting to get seriously close to the magic 30m mark!

Since my jump PB was the final event and the price ceremony and after party was extremely fun, I still end the weekend with positive feelings and motivation to get the scores I want in the next competition, which is the world championship in the Ukraine!