Summer Camp for Ambition this year was split into two sections, the older FIS athletes training the first two weeks and the younger athletes coming out for the second two weeks. ...
Both parts of summer camp saw us return to Stelvio Glacier. Throughout the whole four weeks we were very lucky with the weather, only loosing a few weather days to either the snow being too soft or an outrageous storm. For the first three weeks of the camp we stayed up at mid station 3020m where our day normally started at 5:15am, and towards the end of the camp 4:30am. The training that we had was perfect with our own skidoos or piste basher meaning we could do a large volume of quality training on solid snow before it started to get soft. Throughout the camp we were in with good company with the likes of Lara Gut, Erik Gauy, Axel Lund Svindal and the German World & Europa Cup Team. Erik Guay even commented “you guys have a sweet set up here, private training!!”. It was really good to watch and speak to the World Cup guys and learn as much as we could from them. By having such a great training set up meant we had plenty of room to work on technique through drills and free-skiing and not have to worry about trying to ski on an over-crowded piste or lane space. We all made use of the great training conditions as everyone make some kind of progress in both Slalom and GS.
Along with focusing on the skiing side throughout summer camp, we also continued our strength and conditioning training in the afternoons, under the guidance of Tom White.
Our days off were planned around forecasted storms or when is was going to be warmer, on these days we often travelled back to our base in Leogang to have a short rest and recharge ready for the next stint of early morning wake ups. This meant we really could utilise the awesome conditions when we were back and ready to go! The hot weather on the days off meant we could also continue our training for beach volley ball along with Fraser giving Alice a run for her money doing flips off high diving boards at Area 47. Definitely recommend this Water Park to anyone around the Sölden area. On the last week of the camp we moved down to Bormio and drove up to the lifts each day, after three weeks of staying up on the glacier. Although we had to use lift queues and didn’t start training until later we still managed to get another solid block of training in. We were not all collectively there as a team (All of FIS and Children's) but it was really good to see the new members of the team fitting in really well and adding to the atmosphere. Of course Summer Camp would not be Summer Camp without the mass game of manhunt, which in fact we played twice this year both of which I think the coaches won. Us athletes better get practicing more for next year...
Thank you of course to the coaches - Marc, Tom, TJ and Rob for organising such a successful and productive summer camp!
Written by Bethany Widdup and Ella Still.