I just love my life as a racer.
I love to coach and I love to see someone else getting better and better on the bike. I guess you already have figured out that I also adore to race. I am the generation who improved their riding when you race, because the good tracks were just open for races and chair lifts were just running on race weekends. Now we have many bikeparks and you don’t have to race to ride the best tracks. But I still think when you race and you like to compete (thats very important) you get definitely much faster and better.
So three years ago I decided to make race camps for girls who had never raced before. I teach them all the stuff I had to learn by myself and pass on my experiences and secrets. I really enjoy the time with them I pretty much live with them again through my whole DH career. It is very emotional and can be stressful.And every year we have some little dramas but nearly always with an happy end.
This year it was something special. The first time in the Niva! no Diva history one of my racer girls made it to podium next to me. She was all weekend long very fast and sticked to my back wheel. But it is something different to ride fast in the training or ride fast in the race run. She kept it together and kept her 3 place from qualification.
At the beginning of the race camp we were 5 girls. On friday we did the track walk together and talked about the fastest lines. Unfortunately on girl got really sick over the night and could continue the race camp. So we were 4 on Saturday. We did some good trainings runs and in my opinion we were a very fast group this year. I was totally satisfied and happy. The qualification run went fine for all of us too and because we were riding the whole day with our gopros we could discuss afterwards the best lines by watching our videos. On raceday (Sunday) Mara had bad luck because in her first trainings run her breaks didn’t work and she got of the track very bad and decided not to race. And so at the end it was Nicole, Stef and myself. But the girls very already like professionals and stayed focused even we missed one dream team member.
In the race run Stef had very good run just one mistake at the top and Nicole hit all the lines she wanted and also did the big gap which she did just twice.
My run was also good and I didn’t make a big mistake. I ended up on the second spot behind my good friend Angie Hohenwarter followed by my Niva! No Diva Ladie Stef. The only girl who beat us was the local young gun Valentina Höll. She smoked our times and is the future of the Austrian downhill scence – or even of the world. She is so fast and I can’t wait to see who she will do at the World cups in two years.
I want say a big thanks to my sponsors, who supported the camp and made my girls smile, because of this big goody bag stuff. (Go Pro, Iriedaily, Baby-G, Verival, Coco Drink, Ion, Carbocage, Maxxis, Acros, Board-Shack, Epic-Wear, Saalbach Tourismus, Glemmride) |
