Women's Alpine Rolls to New Zealand
PARK CITY, UT (July 13) – The women's U.S. Alpine Ski Team, including Olympic gold medalists Lindsey Vonn (Vail, CO) and Julia Mancuso (Squaw Valley, CA), will begin their first on-snow camp since May next week at Coronet Peak in New Zealand. The annual multi-week summer session is heavily focused on technique with gate training almost exclusively locked on giant slalom for speed skiers, while technical skiers will also work on slalom. Both groups will test numerous ski, boot and binding set-ups throughout the camp. The landscape of Coronet Peak allows U.S. coaches to train athletes on up to five different slopes each injected with water to varying degrees in order to mimic a multitude of different Audi FIS Alpine World Cup race conditions.
HIGHLIGHTS
- The women's U.S. Alpine Ski Team opens a multi-week on-snow camp at New Zealand's Coronet Peak next week.
- Attending athletes include Lindsey Vonn (Vail, CO) and Julia Mancuso (Squaw Valley, CA) along with World Cup podium finisher Mikaela Shiffrin (Eagle-Vail, CO).
- Also on snow at Coronet Peak will be the nation's points leading women's downhill team of Stacey Cook (Mammoth Mountain, CA), Leanne Smith (North Conway, NH), Laurenne Ross (Bend, OR) and Alice McKennis (Glenwood Springs, CO).
- While primarily a technique focused camp, the athletes will test numerous ski, boot and binding set-ups throughout the camp to ensure they are skiing on the fastest equipment when the Audi FIS Alpine World Cup season opens in October.
- Coronet Peak features five exclusive training slopes allowing coaches to create varying conditions that mimic the snow surfaces found on the World Cup.
QUOTES
Alex Hoedlmoser, Head Coach
Coronet Peak is the perfect location for our athletes to return to on-snow training. There are five different training slopes, so we're able to set a variety of course sets and it also allows us to inject each surface with different levels of ice. Essentially, we can create a lot of different World Cup conditions. It's a lot of work for our staff, but it's extremely productive for our athletes.
This is primarily a giant slalom camp focused on technique, but we'll also do a good bit of freeskiing on super G skis and a ton of equipment testing. The open hill scenario also allows us to create a number of testing scenarios in order for the athletes to find out what equipment responds the best on different snow conditions.
Leanne Smith
This camp is a great opportunity for all of us to get back on snow comfortably and really dial in our technique and equipment before we start training speed in Chile. If you have good technique in giant slalom, then you'll have good technique in downhill and super G too.
I've heard Coronet Peak has a ton of snow this year, so I'm really pumped about that. But it's also a lot of fun off the snow in New Zealand. You can get away from the mountain and it almost feels like your back to summer.
Alice McKennis
The terrain at Coronet Peak is awesome and perfect for what we need to accomplish. We train on a T-bar, so you can get 30 runs in a day if you want to get after it. Our coaches always do a great job of preparing the snow surface, which gives us a lot of opportunity to get things dialed.
Aside from skiing, New Zealand is just a fun place to be. The people are super nice and there are so many off hill activities to keep us busy. From shopping to golf to bungee jumping, pretty much anything you want to do is there.
