Team 2017

Perianne Jones - The Making of a Champion: Getty Ready for Christmas
By: Perianne Jones (2006/12/21)

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Perrianne Jones is a member of the National Ski Team. Peri is from Almonte and grew up skiing with the various local ski clubs. She is now living in Canmore (AB) where she shares a house with Olympic Gold medalist Chandra Crawford. They should be a deadly duo at Vancouver in 2010.

In this series of articles she shares some insight into her life for the Ottawa ski community on the Fresh Air Experience website, and reprinted here with permission.

Well we have spent a good four weeks on the road doing our pre-Christmas racing. There have been some good races, some bad ones, and lots of opportunities to learn a few things.

This past week in Soldier Hollow has been a little bit challenging. Upon arrival we discovered that there really wasn't very much snow here, and we would be skiing 10km on a 2km loop! (that means 5 laps for those of you who need a little help with math).

I was a little shocked, I don't think I've skied that many laps ever, but at least I'm not a boy, because they did 8 laps to cover 15km (which yes, was actually 16km). As it turns out all of those laps were maybe not so necessary as we woke up Saturday morning to knee deep snow! (my knee is about a foot off the ground) Never the less we skied our 5 laps and the boys their 8 in the fresh snow and it wasn't all that bad.

We woke up Sunday morning to the exact same scene, lots of fresh snow. This time it was a classic sprint, and since it snowed all day it made it a little more challenging for the wax men. My qualifier went alright I came in in 3rd place behind and American skier, and my teammate Amanda. The heats were a complete disaster. I was dead tired, and didn't make it through to the semi-final round. It was a little embarrasing, but most people made the assumption that my skies were bad. In any case it's time to rest up for the next big thing...The Tour De Ski!!

The Nordic Combined World Cup B was also happening this weekend here, so there are many very skiiny guys around our hotel (The Homestead), they are very quick to notice the three girls on our team because their sport still only includes the male gender. The looks we got at the buffet breakfasts, lunchs and dinners were not very subtle.

We just finished our last race in Soldier Hollow, and are packing our things to leave for Europe tomorrow. We will start our journey to Davos, Switzerland tomorrow, and hopefully arrive before wednesday.

Christmas will be in Davos and the Tour de Ski will start shortly after.

Previous articles in this series...