World Championships Korea

For this special occasion (our first World Champs) we invited our mom to see us (don’t know if she really looked) ride for the first time. Also Bibian Mentel and Jan de Ceuster flew in to make our team complete with an assistant coach and physio. Before writing about our experiences there, we want to thank everybody who supported us!
First of all the course looked amaizing! Almost as if the course was cut out of the mountain with a laser. With the crash Britt made in Bad Gastein she couldn’t train the first day but we were pretty hopefull as the knee was improving. The training started out good by stikking the first run quite nice. It only improved over the 2 training days.
Britt sadly didn’t improve enough so that she could start. It sucked but nevertheless she stood on the corner hit(see left) and yelled and coached me. Our mom, now fully understanding our sport wached (or didn’t watch) and brought up the coffie ;)
Qualifying day: the day that I had to ride 2 fast runs to get into the top 16.
My first run wasn’t fast as I made a couple of mistakes and overshot a kicker at the end. My second run had to be way faster. It started off as a really fast run but just before the corner hit, my edge got caught in a hole in the course and I got slammed into the flag… World Champs in 1 sec over and done…
It was sooo disapointing as my riding in training was a lot better and I had the feeling I could get into the top 16. After feeling very bad for quite a (long) while, we had the plessure of singing korean karroke…
The next day, the day of the finals, Bibian was forerunner and she kicked ass!! At least one dutchie riding on the finals day. It even snowed that day.. Normal you think… No way it never snows in Korea. The slopes are all artificial snow, the last time it snowed was 20 years ago. That evening we decided to do a little night riding. So at 21.30 Rutger, Jan, Bibian, Frank and I put on our gear and went out. Two slopes were closed for the slalom competition the next day. One, the real competition slope and one closeby. The one closeby hadn’t been groomed and because it had stayed cold we looked at a powder filled slope….The little kids in us woke up and could not resist the temptation…We kind off missed all the ropes and rode the KOREAN POWDER hahaha It even was pretty deep, movie coming online soon.
Amaizing when you realize that this is a situation that is highly unusual. The next morning our lines were still proudly liying there. If people are still wondering how they came there…dutchies…

Lets forget Bad Gastein

Jep the title is correct, Bad Gastein wasn’t a success. Except for the good course, good organisation and good weather. You would think this is the perfect combo….
World cup 1: both our first runs were ok but not good enough, second run we both crashed. So not even close to the finals that was great disappointment.

Bad Gastein is known for its night finals so at eight the finals started. It was really a cool final to watch with loads of people and a hard and fast course.

Second day, Second world cup. We were glad we could start again for another race, it was time for revenge! But it wasn’t that kind of day. Bell ended up at the 19th place and Britt ended up at the hospital with a knee injury…..