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'The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams' (Eleanor Roosevelt).

Goals set high: French ski cross team

The French ski cross team can look back to a successful 2006/2007 season. In addition to three medals at the FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships, it finished the season with four ladies in the top nine and two men in the top ten of the FIS World Cup rankings. The brightest star on the team, Ophelie David, collected her fourth World Cup title in as many years and the first World Championship gold. Moreover, 20-year-old Meryl Boulangeat captured her career-first FIS World Cup victory as well as a silver medal at the Worlds, while her younger sister Alizee took the Junior title in Airolo (SUI).

“For the first time, we now have an official French ski cross team with a full-time coach, Christophe Hermitan. Following the inclusion of ski cross in the program of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, the French Ski Federation (FFS) is committed to providing the best possible training conditions to the athletes to enable them to meet their goals,” said Remi Sella, Sports Director for Freestyle Skiing with the FFS. “We have put in place a full-year training program with camps once a month. During the camps, FFS provides a physiotherapist and a technician to support the team. Most of the athletes are professional skiers who used to train on their own. We are now trying to find the right balance between the two systems,” Sella added.

“We just finished our first on-snow camp at Les Deux Alpes in very good glacier conditions. Another camp is planned there in July before we continue with more discipline-specific on-snow training in Saas Fee (SUI) and Tignes (FRA) in September-October,” commented Hermitan. “We have a very successful group of four ladies and seven men who have high goals for the coming seasons. There is a great spirit in the team, with the veteran skiers like Ophelie providing excellent support for the younger ones who greatly benefit from their experience. This especially comes to play in ski cross-specific training and in injury prevention which is a major focus for us since ski cross is a contact sport.”

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For all Freestyle national teams, the training camp season is in full swing. For example, the US aerials team locked down the basics during a camp in Lake Placid. With 35-50 jumps a day on the water ramps along with trampoline training, the team set the foundation for dry-land training before regrouping in Park City in mid-July for another pool session. Park City will also host the Australian, Canadian and Chinese aerial teams in July. Meanwhile, the US mogul skiers kicked off their camp season with a ‘split-personality’ camp: the first three days at the water ramp and trampoline at Steamboat Springs were followed by three days of on-snow workouts at Arapahoe Basin. The team will next travel to El Colorado (CHI) for the traditional on-snow camp in August. The Canadian ladies’ and men’s mogul teams are both currently training at Whistler, BC, on the Blackcomb glacier. The ladies will then hold on-snow camps at Mt. Hood, Oregon and in Chile while the men are headed to Zermatt (SUI) this autumn.

The focus of the Finnish Freestylers, co-coached by Sami Mustonen who retired as an active athlete after last season, is on discipline-specific training this summer. This includes a new training base in Folgefonna (NOR) where the moguls and half-pipe teams are spending most of June and July, along with the Norwegian and Swedish teams. Folgefonna, near Bergen, provides excellent conditions for summer skiing, including a prepared moguls piste and air jumps as well as various dry land training opportunities, all at an altitude of only 1000 m.

Another must-be site for Freestyle summer training is the Freestyle Holland Waterjump in Eindhoven (NED). The water jump is not only being used by Freestyle skiers but also by snowboarders, BMX riders, skateboarders and inline skaters. The center is located just 15 minutes from the Montana Snowcenter Ski Dome in the southern Netherlands.