Date: 24th of December 2007

Merry Christmas Everyone!

On behalf of all the staff and athletes with AWSC this year we’d like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.  While those of you back in Oz enjoy the warm summer weather all the crew here were out today enjoying the clear skies and fresh snow.

The boarders were quick to leave this morning to make the most of the blue skies. They started their morning with a warm up through “the boardercross run”, which is actually a summer mountain biking track, consisting of 18 switch back turns with big berms with some rhythm sections to link them up.  After the warm up the group headed to the park.  Oli, Jamie and Jay all started working on their boardslides whilst Kane and Jack got technical with some frontside boardslides with a tap to backside 180 out.  Jordy worked on his line next to the boxes and will be hitting them with the rest of the group in no time.  To end the morning, the group headed over to the big air site to learn the rules and get familiar with the site.

After lunch the gang was back to the air site and working on their straight airs. The guys progressed quickly – with some methods, indy’s and a variety of other nice straight airs of the different jumps.  It didn’t take long for Kane and Jack to progress to the big floater.  Standout of the day has to be Jack who hit the big floater first out of the boarders with a massive 40ft straight air.

Team Moguls had a 9 am start this morning and headed straight for the air site. Following the heavy snowfalls of the past couple of days, a small amount of work and stepping was required to get the site back in order.  Once this was completed the crew hiked up for their first hits of the day. Kate and Brighid killed it early with their first hits on the small knoll jump.  Jack broke his belt, which forced coach Ridley to give up his and ski with his pants around his ankles for the remainder of the morning! 

Alex did his first 360’s for the camp today, proving to be a dark horse with some very nice spins.  Brodie was back on his game working hard on his lead hand.  Bryn was pencil straight as usual and progressed onto some 180 spread 180’s, which were also very impressive.

The afternoon began with the group helping Ridley and Toppa prepare the mogul course which should be ready in the next 24 hours.  After that they headed straight for the air site again. Brighid took a big hit and sat the rest of the afternoon out. Brodie picked up his game and on Ridley’s request threw down some 7’s. The first one was slightly over rotated, the second was stomped!  Bryn and Brodie hit the big jump and pulled some very smooth 360’ s.  Once the Christmas Eve sun started to set the light became poor and so the group headed back to the hostel for a well deserved rest.

Ridley put in the over time today heading out again tonight with legs and Toppa to build the mogul course. He returned at 10:30pm and informs us that it is looking good so the guys will be training on it in no time.

Chris’s freeride group headed out for the usual warm up run and stretch this morning. After that it was off to the air site for the first time. A bit of site prep was needed to make everything safe and jumper friendly.  Amy, Bassett, and Lauren all built up their confidence by getting use to the landing hill.  They then moved up to jumping off the knoll.  By the end of the session Amy and Bassett were hitting small jump Chris had built off the knoll.  All three girls had good improvements in their take-offs.  Hamish started out on the small kicker for a few before moving up to the medium jump where he was perfecting his take-offs and getting used to a bit of air time again.   He even threw in a couple of nice mute grabs.

In the afternoon the group had a bit of a cruiser session. They headed straight to the backside, via Eldorado where they practiced their switch skiing on the flatter terrain. Halfway down the run Chris pulled the group to the cliff area secretly hiding in the trees. Then they hit another run off sunny ridge, which had just opened and the group had some great powder turns. They finished with a lap through the park where the girls were hitting up all the boxes they could on the way down to the comet chair.

Pinky goes to Laura Bassett today.  Yesterday at tubing, Bassett froze in her jeans all night, despite being told to wear ski gear.  Then tonight she took of to ice skating in her  jeans again.  Some people just don’t learn.

With the exception of some last minute KK shopping from a few of the group all is in place for a very big Christmas day. A group headed downtown to finish their KK shopping but other than that everyone is relaxing and taking it easy.
 
Tonight’s activity was ice skating. Chris, Beggsy and Pez took the group down to the lake for a game of hockey. Hamish and Jamie were the standout players and kept a close game going and held their own for the Aussies in a game against some local kids. There were a few funny falls and lots of laughs for some of the kids who were trying to get knack of skating, the kids all came home beaming and saying what a good night they had.

Tonight was the first in the series of AWSC athlete awards which are proudly supported by our generous sponsors Bolle , Helly Hansen and XTM . The Bolle Big Break Award sees one athlete per week awarded with a pair of Bolle Goggles. This award is judged by the coaches and is given to the athlete who has made the biggest overall improvement during the past week. This week's recipient was Jamie Callis who made huge improvements with his boarding over the past week.

Our second award is the Helly Hansen Encouragement Award that sees toasty warm Helly Hansen Thermals and a Beanie presented each week to the boarder or skier who put in the greatest continuous effort into their training. This week we awarded two people with Helly Hansen awards they were Kate Scott and Amy Wilson.

The final award is the XTM Training excellence Award. This weeks award was given to Kane Trubenbacher who has been working super hard over the past few weeks giving 110% effort to every session on snow and leading by example with his enthusiasm and attitude.  Congratulations to all our winners.

Naturally there will be no training tomorrow but everyone is welcome to head out and have a free ski / board. There will be a sleep in followed by a massive cooked breakfast. There will be a light lunch followed by the feast of all feasts prepared by own very own master chef Emma. Remember to check out the Christmas update tomorrow!

Well that’s about it for today, Merry Christmas…

So until then.

Stowie and Beggsy