Blue Mountain, Ontario WC

It was a short trip to Canada this time and we arrived to find a course that a lot of people felt was less that satisfactory. A lot of small jumps for the speed we were carrying and a lot of narrow places that would allow multiple riders to make it through at once. This had its obvious effects come race day, with crashes in nearly every men's heat. Qualifying day was another stressful one as I had some trouble in my first run and had to rely entirely on my second. I played it a little on the conservative side and crossed the line with a time of 68.72, finishing in 18th place. I knew after running practice with a few of the other guys that things were certainly going to get dicey in all areas of the course. In my heat I had a good start and came through the first turn battling for second place, I wasn't able to take the line that I wanted through the turn and I lost some ground. The same rider collided with me going off of the double in the second turn and I was able to power through the next roller section and pass back into third place. A few turns later the same rider collided with me again on the take-offs of one of the jumps. I was down and out of the race, another unlucky turn of events. Thanks for reading.

X Games

After a lot of flying we arrived to Aspen at what would be our house for the week. It certainly felt good to be back in the States but my body didn't seem to care that there had been a significant time change from Europe. It was safe to say that I would never be late to our 9am practice sessions because at that point I had already been awake for 6 hours. The practice sessions were going well and the course was very mellow in comparison to past X Games venues. But it was plenty of fun still. The qualifying day came around on Friday and I was feeling good. The format had changed so all of the riders only got one time trial run, so it was all or nothing. Snow had fallen the night before and the speeds down the course slowed to a crawl. I had a great run going but I didn't feel that I was carrying enough speed in the last jump, which was imperative to clear, so I popped as hard as I could off of the lip but this placed me in the back seat. So I landed on my butt and struggled across the finish line, crossing in 18th place. It wasn't the best finish but I made it into the heats. I had a tough draw for first heats the following day, couple that with a less than desirable lane choice and some mistakes on my part led me to not advance out of the first round. Definitely a bummer but there will be more races and that's how things go sometimes. Thanks for reading!