Konigssee World Cup 6

I had some demons to exorcise on my trip to Konigssee in Germany.

My last 3 races on this track have resulted in me crashing quite dramatically and finishing at the back of the field.  All 3 crashes were due to 1 particular corner on this track – the kreisel.  On my previous visits here, I didn’t really have a problem with this corner in training, but the combination of a spritzed track and polished runners meant I didn’t have enough grip on the 3 race days and having not controlled the waves enough in the kreisel, I would find myself exiting the corner at a bad angle, heading towards one of the side walls and flipping over onto my back.

I didn’t want to make it 4 in a row, especially with my Dad coming out to watch and the fact that it was on Tv too!

I woke up on race day and all I could think about was whether I was going to crash or not!  My heart was racing before I realised this wasn’t good psychological preparation at all.  I decided to take race day as if it was just another training day, but with a fast push at the start.  Concentrating on the key areas on the track and going through my visualisation techniques, rather than the thinking about external expectations, my outcome concerns or the pressures of competing on World Cup.

A foot injury that I picked up over the Christmas period was still causing me problems warming up, but fortunately I experienced no pain when pushing my sled and on both my runs I was the 3rd fastest pusher in the whole field, which I was happy with.  Both my runs were fairly consistent, not perfect but competitive and I finished the race in 15th position without any crashes 🙂

With my history on this track, some sled problems hampering the training days before the race and my foot issue, I would have taken 15th at the start of the day.  This result was made better the next day when it was discovered that my sled was bent in 5 different places.  I’m sure this was the cause of some problems in training and it would have had an effect on my times in the race, but how much, we’ll never know.  It’s all been straightened up now so I’m looking forward to racing in Switzerland this Friday on a square sled!

Mens top 6:

1	Martins Dukurs	01:35.29
2	Sandro Stielicke	01:35.63	00.34
3	Frank Rommel	01:35.84	00.55
4	Kristan Bromley	01:35.88	00.59
5	Michi Halilovic	01:36.02	00.73
6	Jon Montgomery	01:36.06	00.77

Womens top 6:

1	Mellisa Hollingsworth	01:38.26
2	Kerstin Szymkowiak	01:38.50	00.24
3	Shelley Rudman	01:38.73	00.47
4	Marion Trott	01:38.87	00.61
5	Anja Huber	01:39.08	00.82
6	Noelle Pikus-Pace	01:39.10	00.84