The Davos Switzerland cross-country world cup weekend is in the books. It was a great one for the US Ski Team. Rosie Brennan won both the sprint and the distance races, claiming both the overall World Cup leader bib and the Sprint Cup bib all in the same weekend. On top of Rosie’s success, the young skier’s team had a breakout weekend with JC Schoonmaker qualifying for the sprints in fifth and Scott Patterson finishing the distance day in 16th. Although the Scandinavian teams were sitting out this weekend, many big-name sprinters and distance skiers were still in the race.
Behind the scenes, the waxing was really good and we ended up making some of the fastest skis in the competition both Saturday and Sunday. We had ample testing time leading up to the races over the weekend and our techs combined have experience with multiple different brands, and the team utilized many of these. We tested up to 20 different powders, blocks and liquids, leaving us with 60+ products tested, not including hand structure.
Conditions were a bit tricky with the snow coming in. In Davos, the new snow is incredibly dry, making it challenging to settle on just one product or even one tip of a product. We used colder dry waxes, we used warm dry waxes and we used wet condition products as well. Having a cohesive and knowledgeable tech group, we were able to build on our fast skis in the morning competitions and make them better in the afternoon.
Period one of racing will finish in Dresden this week, but I will be heading home for some rest before a big string of races on the Tour de Ski starting January 1st. From there, we will travel up to Scandinavia for race weekends in Finland and Sweden! Until next time I hope everyone has a happy holiday and a good start to the new year!
About the Author
Chris Hecker, New Moon Ski and Wax Tech, has worked on the Rex Ski Wax world cup staff and has recently joined the US Ski Team as a wax tech and will travel with them on the world cup circuit to multiple race venues.
