I have always thought that if were a foreigner flying to the United States, customs was a most unwelcoming and frustrating first experience of this country. Getting into the EU, on the other hand, is super easy and they seem to actually want you to be there. Going to Russia is like going to the United States. You have to fill out a lengthy application and they want to know everything about you. When you get there you have to recheck all of your bags and recheck-in for your next flight. When you are on a 20 person team and every one of you has at least 4 bags at or above 50lbs, this is no easy task. The trip took a while, but we made it.

One of my first experiences of Russia was quite funny. My teammates and I were all sitting at the back of the plane, waiting to disembark in Sochi. Our wheelchairs had not come up to the plane yet so we inquired to the steward if they were going to come up to the plane at all. He pauses for a moment, looks out the door of the plane, looks back at us, and with a slight frown says “I will ask, but this is Russia.” (Where did they go? Siberia?)

We stayed in this completely manufactured village called Rosa Khutor that consists of nothing but giant hotels and a sewage infested river running through the middle. The nearest real town is about 30 minutes down the valley. There is construction going on all along the valley, 24/7, and I have never seen so many dump trucks and concrete mixers in one place.

The security situation in this area is intense. Sochi is just barely north of the Georgian border, which Russia invaded a few years ago over a dispute about Russians living in several regions bordering Russia. This did not go well for Georgia, so they are not exactly friends. Chechnya, a republic of Russia, is a few hundred kilometers to the east, and Russia has had to quell several uprisings over the past few decades. Due to all of this one can see not just the police everywhere, but the army, too. The ski area is accessed by one gondola and you are only allowed to go up there on the days you are racing, so freeskiing is not possible. You also need to pass through full airport-like security run by guards who have no sense of humor and are not allowed to smile. The skiing looks like it would be great and the mountain is huge and steep, but the chances of running into hidden machine gun nests and razor wire are rather higher than your average ski area.

The downhill is awesome. We ran down the men’s downhill which has all sorts of cool terrain features, including steeps, flats, fall-away turns, and a real jump! We don’t often have jumps in our downhills because there are some disability classes that are not well suited to flying through the air, or so I have been told. I saw all the disability classes go down the course and they did just fine, with no one class crashed more than the other. The track was a ton of fun and if you ran it correctly you were in the air for quite some time. Due to very soft snow and warm weather, we ran the only training run of the downhill and the first race on the same day. Normally a downhill takes two days of training and one day of racing. I ended up winning the race because of a perfect combination of a bumpy track, technical turns, and a jump I was not at all afraid of going full speed on. The next day we had another downhill and my teammate, Chris Devlin-Young, won. It bodes well for next year.

The next day it started to rain. We were supposed to run a super-combined but the track go too soft and the visibility was too bad so we just ran a slalom. In the slalom I was top ten in the first run and easily within striking distance for the podium. In my second run I skied some of the best slalom I have ever skied, but I went too straight into a flush just before the finish and flipped over the wrong side of the last few gates. This has been a pattern the whole year, but I know that once I get my consistency, I will crush slaloms.

At the end of this World Cup season I ended up third in the giant slalom standings and I won the speed events globe (we don’t have enough races to do separate globes for downhill and super-g, and a crystal globe is the first place prize of any world cup overall category). Overall it wasn’t a bad year, but I have the skills to be the best.

Thanks to all my sponsors for helping me through another season. Nike, Starz Entertainment, Aspen Seating, POC and Enabling Technologies make it happen!

Here are some pictures!

Downhill Finish

Downhill Podium

‘Merica!

The top of the downhill

Just to the left is the ski area, and just beyond those mountains is Georgia.

Rosa Khutor

The rest of the races ended up even worse for me. I did not manage to finish the super-combined, giant slalom or slalom due my equipment setup and the snow conditions. All of these events require a great deal of stivot turns, which means that you pivot your ski at the top of the turn to give the ski more direction towards the next turn than you would have with a normal, carved turn. Stivots are used when you can’t generate enough pressure quickly enough to make the turn in a clean arc because of the high speed, snow conditions, and/or steepness of the hill. My monoski carves an amazing turn, but does not stivot very well when the snow is really hard, which it was.

The World Championships were not a complete loss, however. On the last day we had a team event in the form of a mini skier-cross. We had an 18 second track with berms and bumps and we each went down it one at a time, with the three fastest times from your country recorded. As a team we managed second place, and I was the second fastest monoskier down the track, only a few hundredths off the fastest. I felt quite at home after many years of X-Games. It was not the most important race of the event, but it made the entire team a little bit happier.

The pressure of an even like the World Championships and to a greater extent the Paralympics, are unique in the world of ski racing. If you want to win, everything has to come together for you in one brief moment lasting no more than two minutes. All your training and media exposure you experience in the years prior is all focused on winning in these two main events, and you only have one shot every few years. If one tiny thing goes wrong, it seems like you have just wasted years of your life for nothing. If you can’t tell yet, I am not a fan of these events. The regular world cup is, in a sense, much harder and a better gauge for who is a better skier. To win a world cup overall title, you have to ski consistently well the entire season. In this environment I have done much better, winning three overall titles in two disciplines in my career. I have never had success at the World Championships or Paralympics, and those two events are all people seem to remember and care about. It is a uniquely infuriating circumstance, but that is what powder days are for.

Here are some pictures from the World Championships.

The top of the downhill.

Slalom 1

Slalom 2

Slalom 3

Slalom 4

The World Championships are being held in the town of La Molina, Spain. The hill for giant slalom and slalom has a really steep pitch, so I should have some advantage, as I am lighter and more maneuverable than the average monoskier. The hill for the speed events, however, is rumored to be quite flat, which is not good for me at all. I have quite a bit of skill at speed events, but I am lighter than everyone else out there, making rough terrain, wind gusts, and mistakes add much more to my overall time.

I am most excited for Russia. We are having a test event in Sochi so that we can make sure the venues are going to work properly before the Paralympics next year. Most of what I know about Russia has been learned from years of movies, all with a strong Western Cold War bias. I assume this portrayal is not quite accurate, but the visa application process would suggest the movies are not all wrong. The Russians want to know a bit too much information about you, especially if you have ever been in the military. I don’t have to deal with this issue, but a few teammates do. I can’t help but wonder how I can get a Russian customs agent to say to me “Mister Valker, vee haf vays of making you talk.” That would be fun. I have also learned a few useful Russian phrases, my favorite of which is “spokoynoy nochi” which means “goodnight.” I plan on using this phrase in as many unsuitable situations as possible, such as to the start referee, just before I go out of the start. Imagine the confusion.

The rest of my bags are not going to pack themselves, so google Rosa Khutor, the name of the ski area in Sochi, and I am going to finish up here.

Talk to you from Spain.

The JW Marriott Hotel and Nokia Theater

There were pre-parties, after-parties, and after-after-parties, all of which were outrageous. The music was really loud at each party, and no venue had speakers less than ten feet tall. If you were to go into cardiac arrest, CPR would not be needed, for you would promptly snap out of it, your heart beating in time to some hip hop beat. I learned also that ESPN thinks rap/hip-hop are the only music genres athletes like to listen to. I must have missed that memo.

Before the actual awards show everyone had to walk down the red carpet, full of loud and obnoxious paparazzi who only had attention for the famous and fabulous. I had the unfortunate luck to find myself in between Danica Patrick and Maria Sherapova for this experience. One might imagine that no guy couldn’t imagine a better place to be than between these two. I can attest, however, that when cameras were involved everyone else became invisible, including myself. I think three out of about one hundred photographers took my photo, mostly out of pity. I did, however, have a fantastic suit and rather good looking hair.

Rolling down the red carpet.

Overall it was a once or few times in a lifetime experience that was definitely worth it. I did not get to hobnob with anyone famous, unfortunately. I barely watch sports so I had no idea who anyone was. I did not win an ESPY, either. The prize in my category went to Kyle Maynard who climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro with no arms or legs.

Here is the link: http://www.espn.com/espys

You have many options of people to vote for, but I would greatly appreciate your vote in my particular category. I won’t be like a political candidate and promise a world of things I have no power to give in order to get your vote. However, if I am ever in possession of large quantities of punch and pie, I would throw a huge punch and pie party and all of my supporters would be invited, with good times to be had by all. After all, who doesn’t like punch and pie, especially together? I digress. In conclusion, go vote!

It is given in alpine, cross country, adaptive, freestyle, freeskiing, jumping/nordic combined, and snowboarding to an USSA athlete based on criteria established by that sport.

For Tyler’s nomination, the following was written, “Tyler has been on the U.S. Paralympic National Team (former U.S. Adaptive National Team) since 2003. He is currently ranked in the top 10 in GS and SL and top 5 in SG and SC in the world. He had an outstanding season and was our top male World Cup point scorer with 681 of the team’s 4657 overall points which lead to the U.S. Paralympic Alpine National Team winning the Nation’s Cup for the first time since 2010.

Tyler finished 3rd in the World Cup overall, 6th in SL and GS overall, and 1st in SC and SG. No DHs were held this season. In 2012, Tyler was on the podium on the I.P.C. World Cup four times including a SC win at the World Cup finals (the first U.S. win in SC), and was the US Paralympic National Champion in DH, SG and SL.”

Pretty cool!