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“The sound of the air pushing up against me gets louder and louder,<br />
and towards the bottom will start to feel the compressions wanting<br />
to pull my body down and then usually bounce it back up again so we<br />
have to work hard to maintain the body in the tight position."<br />
My efforts worked out well and finished<br />
with 3 top 5 positions. The speed ski track<br />
in Sweden is only a 180kph track max, we<br />
love the track, but we really don’t consider<br />
this real speed skiing as such.<br />
The Covid situation made a lot more<br />
paperwork, cost a lot more, and regular<br />
tests having crap shoved up our noses<br />
at 6am before a race...not cool, still could<br />
never get used to it. But I was not going to<br />
let the covid stop me from what I have to<br />
do, I’m older so I don’t have a time to wait<br />
and at the time we had no idea how long<br />
they would keep Covid going.<br />
Where did it start? For me the speed ski<br />
started at Mt Hutt, it has the steepest and<br />
widest groomed runs in NZ. It was only a<br />
matter of time I think, before someone was<br />
going to race speed, it was lucky enough<br />
to be me, or unlucky depending on how<br />
you look at it, haha. It’s not a sport that<br />
many people want to do and I have the<br />
experience to understand why. Even just<br />
6 years ago it was a bit different skiing in<br />
NZ, there was not so many back then so it<br />
was safer to ski fast. In NZ it is harder and<br />
harder to ski fast due to safety concerns. I<br />
have always been very careful when skiing<br />
fast, it's important not to be reckless and<br />
hurt other people.<br />
Tell us about the gear? Our suits are<br />
made to be air tight, the only protection we<br />
have is a back protector. We wear spoilers<br />
behind our boots which reduce drag. These<br />
are hand made out of hard foam and have<br />
to adhere to FIS regulations, length, weight<br />
and construction. Our helmets are wide so<br />
we can cover our shoulders also adhering<br />
to FIS rules of weight and size. Skis are<br />
240cm maximum length with a side cut<br />
of 96 meters, and slightly wider then an<br />
alpine racing ski, heavy to help hold us to<br />
the ground. Shortened poles to 1 meter<br />
in length with extreme bends to fit tightly<br />
around the body.<br />
How do you go about training for this<br />
discipline? We need to do the runs<br />
around the 180 and above to train for the<br />
high speed, it’s a very hard sport to train<br />
for as we don’t ski the really high speeds<br />
very often. The best we can do around<br />
this is to prepare our bodies at the gym,<br />
mental training also plays a big part.<br />
General skiing is helpful.<br />
Talk us through a normal successful<br />
run? It starts a few hours before the run<br />
with making sure the gear is all put on<br />
correctly, it takes about 40 minutes to gear<br />
up, and usually an hour or two to prepare<br />
the skis with various waxes the night<br />
before. Then we have to carry the skis and<br />
helmet usually across a sketchy traverse<br />
to get to the lower starts wearing non slip<br />
clothing over top of our race suit, a helper<br />
will then take our access skis and clothes<br />
down to the bottom of the track. Prior to<br />
starting the run we take off the nonslip<br />
clothing above a net, usually its steep and<br />
the area sometimes covered in chopped<br />
up powder making it more awkward.<br />
OK so once its our turn we traverse onto<br />
the track, we ready ourselves to jump<br />
the 240cm long skis around. We have 1<br />
minute to start our run. The starter will give<br />
us the OK and then for me I run my eyes<br />
down the line then I go, jumping into the<br />
air and when my skis land I fold up into<br />
my position like a bird going into a dive.<br />
When I’m in position I take another look<br />
forward to check that I’m on line then its<br />
head down all the way, really only seeing<br />
about 10metres ahead at the most. I keep<br />
my eyes mostly on the groomer lines<br />
underneath me which start to become<br />
more blurry as the speed increases. The<br />
dye lines on the sides help give me an idea<br />
also of where I am mainly from peripheral<br />
vision, or if you notice they are under you<br />
then its time to do something steering<br />
wise. There's 1 to 2 key points that I focus<br />
on down the run, I wont go into detail<br />
here but its what I focus on for safety and<br />
speed. The sound of the air pushing up<br />
against me gets louder and louder, and<br />
towards the bottom will start to feel the<br />
compressions wanting to pull my body<br />
down and then usually bounce it back up<br />
again so we have to work hard to maintain<br />
the body in the tight position.<br />
We don’t get long, 15 seconds and the run<br />
is all over, we go through the 100m timing<br />
trap in just over a second and once we<br />
see the red line pass underneath its time<br />
to stand up but not too quickly as suddenly<br />
standing up at 240 will blow you off your<br />
feet. The runout is a decent length but<br />
feels short at these speeds.<br />
Once we have stabilised ourselves in a<br />
standing position we make ourselves as<br />
large as possible to catch as much air but<br />
only for a for seconds, by this stage our<br />
speed has dropped to about 180 and we<br />
then make our first turn being very careful,<br />
and using as mush of the width of the<br />
runout as possible but also allowing some<br />
room for redundancy if something were to<br />
go wrong. By the time we finish the first<br />
turn the speed drops to just above a 100,<br />
then we make the 2nd turn which will finish<br />
us up right towards the end of the runout.<br />
It all has to be well timed and care taken.<br />
The slowing down process is a big deal.<br />
Going from those speeds and slowing up<br />
safely with only a set of skis as breaks<br />
takes a bit of getting use to. But I would<br />
rather have the skis to slow me down then<br />
being on my ass.<br />
The runs that we consider stable and nice<br />
usually are the slower ones, the ones<br />
where we are more uncontrolled usually<br />
turn out to be faster...Like with many<br />
sports, we have to put ourselves out of the<br />
comfort zone if we want to do well.<br />
What speeds do you get up to? During the<br />
Would cup circuit speeds are limited to about<br />
230kph (vars), although most of the time the<br />
tracks at other locations are below 200kph.<br />
So anywhere between 160-230kph...<br />
The World record is now 255.500kph set<br />
at vars 2023 World championships. The<br />
world record before this was set by Italian<br />
Ivan Origone set in 2016 at vars at a speed<br />
of 254.958kph. The NZ record now that<br />
I hold is 248.610kph during the World<br />
championships at vars 2023.<br />
The NZ record before this was 232kph held<br />
by Chris Gebbie set at a different location<br />
back in 2005, at the time the current world<br />
record was 250.7kph (maybe don’t put that<br />
in but you can see the difference of where<br />
the kiwis once stood amongst the top guys)<br />
The current world record for women was<br />
set in 2016 by Italian Valentina Greggio at<br />
247.083kph. There was no world record<br />
from the women this year. The best speed<br />
62//WHERE ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS/<strong>#238</strong>
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