Eurochamps

Bernard Kerr on top of the box: 2009 European Champion.
Not bad, not bad!

European Champs is a really big race, similar to World Champs, but just with the 12 European Country Federations bringing their contingencies of racers. I had several friends racing for the Great Britain, French, and Swiss teams. I spent most of Saturday driving shuttles for people up to the lift, as it was a silly uphill ride from the bottom of the course back to the lift. They had their qualifying runs and the opening ceremonies on Saturday. My friends Bernard Kerr and Sabrina both qualified first with conservative but fast runs!

Sabrina and Floriane at the Opening Ceremonies...man those girls are fast!

Fee and Bernie rocking the GB colors

This guy is a legend! He was in Schladming rocking

around on this bike all weekend last year, too!

Bernie and Harry qualied 1,2 for the day! Nice!!

Emi was so, so sick before her race run. Still a trooper, though!

Racing was slated for Sunday starting at 10:30. Bernie ended up killing it and won the Junior class by 3.5 seconds, which would have put him in 5th in elites! Unfortunately Sabrina had a huge crash and didn’t finish well. The French girls took over the podium again with Floriane Pugin taking the win followed by Emmeline Ragot and Celine Gros. Fee ended up in 6th for the day.

Me and Sabrina kicking back and enjoying the
mounatin views, rivers, and lakes!

The next day we headed out for a beautiful XC ride up one of the next valleys up. We rode past a ski jump training facility on our way up to the bottom of the snow pack. We had so much fun on the way down doing cutties in the scree just playing around. It’s a lot of fun riding with girls with such phenomenal skills!!!

XC ride up to the bottom of the snow pack up another
canyon in Kranjska Gora on Monday

On our way to Maribor, we stopped off in beautiful Bled, Slovenia. This place is COOL!!! There is a beautiful lake in the middle of town that has an island in the middle with a cool church on it. We hired a row boat to go to the island, but about 2 minutes into the adventure, Fee, Jo, and I decided we'd like to swim to the island, so we made Paul row the rest of the way there. It was such refreshing mountain water and it was nice to get a little bit of exercise as well!

Jo cracking the whip on my less than stellar rowing effort

Time for some swimming!

There's a cool castle on the lake cliff side as well!