With the dream of gold less than a week away, the Team has come together one last time to fine tune their skills with the goal of perfect execution during the Games. The star studded camp includes 2002 double silver medalist Bode Miller (Franconia, NH), 2006 gold medalist Ted Ligety (Park City, UT), Olympic veterans Steven Nyman (Sundance, UT) and Marco Sullivan (Squaw Valley, CA), plus Olympic first-timers Andrew Weibrecht (Lake Placid, NY), Erik Fisher (Middleton, ID) and Will Brandenburg (Spokane, WA).
"The camp is going fantastic. We've trained on really great conditions at Park City," said Men's Alpine Head Coach Sasha Rearick "The snow is as similar as we could make it to Whistler at 7,000 ft."
The camp has been structured like a two-a-day football camp. In the morning, the Team trains one event, for example on Thursday they ran super G first followed by GS with a short break in between for the coaches to reset the course. Each session consists of four to seven runs, depending on how the athletes feel.
For several of the athletes, such as Ligety, Nyman, and Weibrecht, they are returning to a hill they are quite comfortable with. All three athletes raced and trained as a junior at Park City Mountain Resort taking countless runs down CB's.
"It's nice to be here in Park City, training in my hometown, it's not often I can do that. It's cool to be here on CB's. It's an awesome hill, a hill I grew up on," said Ligety. "It's sweet how they prepared it and it's nice to have the hill to ourselves."
The Olympic medal hopefuls will continue to dial in their turns at Park City before heading north. Rearick and the coaching staff are confident moving towards Vancouver after seeing such positives in Park City.
"The guys have had an awesome attitude and they have been pushing and challenging each other," said Rearick. "The coaching staff is really excited on how the guys have been pushing the limits on what they've been able to do."
CHARGE HARD BOYS!
Posted by: Dirk | February 08, 2010 at 05:59 PM