January 13, 2009 14:23 by
Seth
So it is the new year and i find myself in a hotel room in san francisco for the moment a twelve hour flight from munich behind me and another twelve hour one to seoul south korea to go. an hour till the shuttle leaves for sfo to check in and i've got a minute to catch you all up to speed..
so it was a typical week in bad gastien austria. i left with a 8th and a 6th from the two world cups, sitting third for the tour, not bad all things considered. we usually run back to back races there and this week was no exception to a brutal schedule.. coming off the holiday break i was fighting with a sinus cold upon arrival getting my sleeping sched. forwarded six hours and trying out two new boards from kessler to see if they would run against the clock.. coming off the win in arosa i headed into this stop with one mission. to come out healthy on the other end of the week so that the world championships and x games would be a true go..
i started the week off by winning the first run of the time trials and slipped to second after the second run to the local austrian markus schirerer who you could tell was truly motivated to perform well in front of his home crowd.. now over the years the race course at bad gastien has kind of been a nemesis for me. the first world cup i ever did there i hooked up into the fences at about forty and went to the hospital coughing up blood from a torn bronchial tube do to the harsh impact on my chest.. first experience bad taste of blood in my mouth.. to start off the week this week i watched my friend and olympic bronze medalist paul henry delerue get taken away in the ambulance with a broken arm.. typical bad gastien sketchyness.. hard snow flat light..
the first race saturday went well.. i dominated the first two heats and had my friend tom velisek of canada comment to me.. "hey seth why don't you stop running time trials all the time ahead of everyone and race some sbx?" well the next heat they caught up with me.. i had the hole shot out of the gate but drifted right over a roller too early thinking i had a full board length lead.. i did not and was landed on from behind. my board locked under another's body weight, there was nothing i could do and i tried to glide it out till the toe side edge caught and i quickly went down.. i got back up in fourth and went on a mission to get a pass in before the line but had to settle for third and a trip to the small finals. getting pinched out in the start that next round, i backed off and settled for the lowly spot of eighth.
sure enough i got the "random" drug test and went off to spend the next two hours of my life waiting to put my urine in a little locking glass jar. as this was a night race it was ten thirty by the time i got done with doping control and back to my hotel for dinner. the alarm was going off before i knew it and it was back to the hill for the morning qualifier. again winning the first run. again slipping back to second behind markus.. and as i felt very tired that morning i couldn't seem to nail my starts and it was another trip to the small finals. i fought a little harder and passed palmer and holland to take sixth behind stian severtsen of norway.
the new boards ran, an acceptable result and i left healthy the next morning for the race down the autobahn to munich and the start of the long road to korea.. week one of eight down. the next two are the big ones..