Königssee World Cup - (2011-2012 season)

After Altenberg, the next race was in Königssee. You'll all recall that Brad and I love....love love love...Königssee. His Europa cup medal, our engagement, my first World Championships...

So obviously I was pretty excited to get back there.

Training was going well, it was nice to to have snow, and the location was amazing, but I was (per usual) struggling with the kreisel, the 360 degree curve. The difficult part is the exit - what happens is that the sled will be too high on the exit and crash down, hitting the right wall. In the past, the hit would combine with the alternating angles of the chicane to flip us on our shoulder, then we'd manage to get back on before Kehlstein (the next curve).

I kept bumping the right wall, but was managing to make it through the chicane somewhat ok. In the race, for the first time in 3 races we actually had two heats! So nice...

...since I finished in 19th the first run! Ouch!


Thankfully, having two runs I had a chance to redeem myself.


Katharine, who had been in 20th, laid down a SMOKING run and moved up an amazing 10-11 places; my run wasn't quite as sweet so you don't see me in the leader box ahead of her, but it was enough of an improvement that (it doesn't show in the video clip below since you'd have to watch the next 5 sleds come down and the drop behind me) I moved up from 19th to 15th!!! Phew!

Overall, two rough Kreisel's but I made it through by the skin of my teeth for a not-great/not-terrible finish, so I was ok with it.

Then came the team event...the next afternoon...story to be continued...