SURPRISE!

Erin Mielzynski, right after she surprised everyone.  This photo is from her blog, which has been amazing lately.

Here's a list of things that have happened semi-recently that have been pretty surprising to me:

1. That time Bryce Bennett won a Nor-Am and scored a 6 in Super-G.  He didn't even win by that much, I guess it just works out sometimes.  He'd been coming on pretty strong in SG this year, scoring in the 20's and then the teens.  But a 6?  Damn, that's low.  He followed it up with a 14 the next day.
2. That time that the women's Ski Team coaches apparently forgot to take any responsibility for the fact that their ringer had some trouble in the Slalom at World Junior's.  Here's a tip: When your team implodes at the big race, don't just blame the 16-year old athletes.  Show a little team spirit, at least in the press, and take some of the blame yourself.  Or not.  "Once you got off the steep, in the middle of the course you go go for it, but you had to be ready to shift gears in the middle. With Mikaela, we gave her everything in the course report, but she didn't shift gears.”  Hmm, yeah, not really what we had in mind.  For the record, here's roughly how it's done:
   
3. That time that Robby Kelley was all indignant that we were giving him a hard time in the Results sidebar (which hasn't been updated in months).  Apparently he found the very mention of advantageous visibility at Panorama insulting, which tells me he didn't read the next item down on the list, which clearly indicates that, regardless of the visibility, if you were a guy, not named Robby Kelley, racing GS at the Pano Nor-Ams this year, you got a beating.  Sorry, everyone, we do try to avoid these sorts of misunderstandings.
4. That time that Head Sport GmbH got pretty peeved about the spy photos of their new boot, which supposedly isn't due out now until 2014.  They spent €1 million developing the boot.  Factory testers are liable to the tune of $50,000 if they "lose" the boots while testing (read: "if they hand the boots off to Atomic").  This is, apparently, top secret stuff.  A clear plastic bag would have obscured the boots enough to make the photos meaningless, to say nothing of a proper boot bag, or (gasp) a cardboard box.  Maybe a paper bag?  Just spitballing here.  Then they wouldn't have had to ask a photographer friend to analyze the origin of the photo (it was a cell phone) to try and ascertain exactly where it came from (it was someone with a cell phone).  The man in charge of the Head boot project also designed the old Tecnica and the old Nordica, among others.  He was also one of the only non-Atomic people to allegedly see the orange plastic inside Marcel Hirscher's "Atomic" boots when Hirscher broke his ankle (apparently Krylon doesn't take well to the interior of a Tecnica shell).  He probably should have known better, but we all make mistakes.
   
   
5. The first time I saw parents at the start.  My how things seem to have changed over the years.
6. That time when Resi Stiegler started 35th and ended up 2nd in a Slalom World Cup.  That was the same race that Erin Mielzynski started 24th and, um, well... she freaking won.  For both of them, it was their best World Cup finish ever.  Resi has been on a long road to recovery and hadn't seen the top-5 in 5 years.  Mielzynski had never even been in the top-10 before.  Also, it was only her 9th World Cup start ever.  Marie-Michelle Gagnon was 3rd, her best World Cup finish ever.  That was amazing.
   
   
7. The men's Nor-Am at Stowe a couple days ago.  What in God's name was going on?
8. That time that the Swedish women went 1-2-3-4 and 10 on the second run in the Slalom at Are.  The winner of that run, Nathalie Eklund, started 51.  If they start to put it together 2 runs in a row, we're screwed.

Photo of Erin Mielzynski from her blog, which is a must-read these days
Photo of Hirscher from sportvicious.com
Photo of Resi borrowed from theskichannel.com


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