Throughout this past season I had series of ups and downs that took me on quite the emotional roller coaster. It was my first season on the World Cup tour and being the rookie on the World Cup team I felt a little out of place. However as the season rolled by I was beginning to find my comfort zone and by the middle of January I felt like I was right where I belonged. Just when I started feeling comfortable is when the coaches decided that I take a break from the World Cup and ski in some European Cup races, which is the equivalent to minor league baseball. Needless to say I was not happy and I knew that I needed to prove myself on the European Cup circuit once again to get another shot at the World Cup.
A week before the next European Cup competition I entered a small race to get some high quality training to prepare for the upcoming event. Unfortunately at this race I injured my right hand quite badly after my ski pole stuck in the snow and bent my wrist to proportions that it’s not designed to bend. Needless to say I was in a lot of pain and the doctors immediately believed it to be broken. Fortunately they were wrong, however the final diagnosis was that I had torn some cartilage, which will inevitably need surgical repair. So there I was demoted from the World Cup with torn cartilage in my right hand when the best race of my athletic career was upon me.
A week after my initial injury we arrived in Altenmarkt, Austria for a European Cup Downhill competition. The rest of my season was at stake, as I needed a podium performance to get another shot at the World Cup. I was already at a disadvantage because my hand was in bad shape, but what made it worse was that the start was flat and required big pushes to get going; something that my hand was not capable of. I knew that I was going to have to ski very well to make up for my slow start so I focused on being very relaxed and opted to take a more direct line than the rest of the field.
Half way through my run there was a gnarly icy compression turn that required extreme precision and leg strength to get through without losing speed. During the training runs everyone had to run this wide to avoid making mistakes but I realized that I had to go for it if I wanted to be fast so I took the chance! I took the tightest line through the compression and came out of it with booming speed, which carried me to the finish and put me in first place. I was ecstatic to see my name on top of the leader board and I knew that I had once again earned my spot on the World Cup even under extreme pressure and with an injured hand
That was the best moment in my athletic career because at that time I realized I could compete with the best in the world, even with an injured hand!