Windham Race Factory

The Copper camp wrapped up with some amazing training opportunities for our crew. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday we had double session training at 9:00AM and 2:00PM. The athletes were on snow from 8:15AM until 4:00PM for some very high volume days to finish their prep camp. Knowing that SL training is easy to come by once we return home to Windham, we spent the majority of our time focused on paneled events. Each day of gate training was comprised of a morning session of paneled SL and an afternoon session of GS. The athletes were continuing to work on building a solid stance and being balanced over the downhill ski through the arc. They were all asked to "over-ski" each course in an effort to build consistent turn shape above the gate. This would allow them to consistently release the ski as they passed by the panel and continue to build shape and pressure above the gate. The ultimate goal was to have the apex of the turn up the hill from the gate and outside the rise line.

The first tracks of the season have been made at Windham! As you likely saw, Windham opened on Saturday, November 17th. This was the earliest opening in 14 years! They opened on East Peak with skiing top to bottom on everyone's favorite race trail, Why Not. I am sure many of you took the opportunity to get a couple of early days on snow, and by all accounts, it was a great start to the season! The Davenport girls took advantage of the early season opening! On the same day Windham opened it's lifts, a group of WRF athletes and coaches traveled to Copper Mountain, Colorado for a Thanksgiving Camp. A total of 17 athletes will be skiing at Copper until November 24th. They already have two days under their belts and the conditions have been fantastic. All of the athletes have made great fundamental gains and are hungry for more! In the years to come, WRF will be continuing to build our offseason camps for a wider range of age groups. Offseason

It's true! Windham Mountain Resort started making snow during the late hours Saturday night on Why Not! Not a typo - making snow on Why Not! They made snow for over 24 hours before the temps warmed up a bit this morning and will be firing the snow guns up again late Tuesday night. They are making snow top to bottom on Why Not with the goal of opening the upper portion of the mountain without having to rely on making snow at the base. If they can't get the snow to the base, they will use D lift to download from the Wheelhouse to the base. Keep your fingers crossed for cold temps and no wind so they can make an abundance of snow and hopefully surprise everyone with an early opening date! Top to bottom snow guns! The upper pitch on Why Not is looking good! Time for B-Net! Still some work to do below the Wheelhouse, but cold temps are coming. The lift crew has kicked it into overdrive as the season is feeling very close. They have the terminals closed on the sides

After posting last week, I realized that I forgot to include a recap of the World Cup season opener! The easy recap to get out of the way is from the men's side...they were unable to race due to weather and poor conditions. I'm sure they were all frustrated to not get the first start out of the way after an offseason of workouts and prep camps, but ski racing is an outdoor sport and we are at the mercy of the weather. Sometimes, we are able to push through but other times the jury has to make the tough decision to pull the plug on the day due to safety concerns. The women raced the day before and also encountered some challenging conditions. They were able to move to a lower start and still contest the race. For those who watched it online, you saw how rough it got for them! The best skiers in the world were getting tossed around but continued to fight their way through it. Far too often young athletes get frustrated and give up after some poor turns in a training course, or