I was invited to be an X Games alternate athlete just a few days before the competition. I discussed it with my coach Iván, and we saw it would be a perfect opportunity to train on the X Games track and perhaps compete. Specific training would be the best right now, to prepare for the upcoming World Cup events.
We left to Aspen, just a two-hour drive from where we’re training in Colorado. We were thrilled to be participating in this event and also to see dear friends who live there, including my younger sister, Julia. We were warmly welcomed, and the next day, official training began. The track was not difficult overall. I went down on the first run, and on the second jump I took a hard hit: I landed before the ideal point and hit my mouth hard with my knee. I stopped and saw that I was bleeding quite a lot. “Oh no!”, I thought, “I’ve barely started and I’m out!” After being treated by the ski patrol, we saw that I had a large, deep cut, but I wouldn’t need stitches. After the bleeding stopped, I went back to training and did two more runs on the track without jumping.
The injury didn’t hinder me the rest of the day, but it made eating and talking difficult, not to mention the horrible lip I ended up with. But like Iván said, it was a wake-up call. Like: “Wake up, girl, this track isn’t easy, pay attention! Okay, okay!” The next day, training went well. I did five runs on the track, always going back up on a snowmobile.
In the qualifiers, I raced down the track, counting the time on the stopwatch, even though I was an alternate athlete. To my surprise, at the end of the day, I was told I’d secured a spot in the finals!
We knew this could happen, and I was very happy to have the opportunity to compete in the heats. The next day, more training, and surprisingly, almost no one showed up, just me, Eva Samkova, and two other male athletes. We didn’t understand why. Could the others be too tired? We had a great training session on the X Games VIP track, not bad! Five more runs, and I was getting more comfortable with the obstacles.
On the day of the finals, the track slowed down because of the snow that kept falling. We had to change the tactic for the second jump, as we didn’t have the speed to clear it. Instead, we opted for the two smaller jumps on the sides. In the semifinals, I was at the leftmost gate and headed toward the left jump. In the fight for space to take the best line for the jump, my board collided with the board of the athlete next to me, and we both fell, falling behind. But I still managed to go down one more time in the consolation run. This time, I made it to the finish, perhaps a little less aggressively so as not to collide with another board.
In short: It was great to have participated in the X Games!
Now a few more days of training in Colorado, and soon we’ll be off to Siberia! That’s right, we’re going to the middle of Russia, to a resort called Sunny Valley, which I couldn’t even find online!
Thanks guys, see you in the next blog!!
