The US has their first ever Junior racer this year, Micah Thatcher. Micah raced the sprint on Monday and had the Junior Individual today. Due to avalanche danger the race course was modified and moved from Pelvoux to Puy St Vincent. The race would be 5 laps with 2 booters so in the 1,350M of climbing there would be 13 transitions. Micah is less than 2 weeks after turning 17, but since his birthday is in this calendar year, he is competing with the 18-20 year olds which is a huge challenge since many of these kids have 5+ years experience as opposed to Micah's 1.5 years.

The great news we have today is that the US is ranked #9 over all in the World Championships!!! Junior and Espoir racers are critical to getting points.  Here is a breakdown of the US Points.  You can check out some daily videos at the webffmetv YouTube channel.

Micah went out strong and was doing great. His downhill skills were allowing him to catch racers in front of him. After straight lining about 400M of his 3rd descent, his ski hit something and sent him flying. Luke, Meredith, and I were watching this from the checkpoint above. We knew something was wrong when he didn't take off right away so we descended to him as quickly as possible. We found that he had snapped his ski in half. We took his ski from him and he continued descending to the next checkpoint. Luke and I quickly started looking for a replacement ski for him and were lucky enough to find an Italian with the same sole length that was willing to lone him his skis for the final 2 descents. We went back up the lift and met Micah at the top of his next ascent. He had lost only 3-4 minutes from his mishap and was gaining ground back on the racer in front of him. We waited for him on his next ascent and it was taking longer than we expected. When we met him on his 5th climb, we learned that on his 4th descent he had broken a boot so he now had 1 boot that did not have a ski mode and that meant that he was basically skiing in a hiking boot. We met Micah at the finish line where he was exhausted, but had successfully completed a difficult race where he had very bad luck.

Micah at the start

Micah at the top of the first climb

Micah at the top of the 2nd climb

Transition 7 of 13

Great Finish with a broken ski and a broken boot!

Luke gave Micah his skis and skied Micah's single ski back down to the base where we headed down to lunch. It was a slow drive down as our rental van still had chains on it and the chains had some broken links so they didn't fit correctly. When we were just about to the bottom, we got a flat tire (remember our rental car also had a flat tire on the drive in from Turin). When we got the spare tire out, we found that the rim was bent and the tire was flat. Micah, Bryce, and Meredith got a ride with the Spanish Team into Pelvoux and Luke and I skinned the rest of the way into town. After a numerous calls to Avis we were finally able to get them to send a tow truck to get the van fixed. We are still working on getting them to replace the car tire. This continues to be a challenge in getting them to take care of their car and van.

Tomorrow's race is the Senior/Espoir Men and Women Individual Race. This will be an amazing course. After trying to deal with the car and van, Kim and I went up to the top of Pelvoux via the lifts, then skinned and booted the top portion of the course. This course is amazing! The top section skins, boots, and skins some more along a narrow ridge. It was great to get out on this section of the course and it also allowed us to ski some great powder. It almost seems wrong to ski 40cm of fresh snow on race skis!

Chad on the ridge of the Men's Individual Course

Looking up the ridge of the Men's Individual Course at La Blanche