Thanks to Isle of Man Sport Aid who funded it I have just got back from Hintertux in Austria after being there for a two month training camp.

The conditions were great up on the Hintertux glacier with quite a big snow park with some big jumps and two different snowboard cross tracks. There hasn’t been much snow fall yet this season in Europe but as Hintertux is so high that wasn’t a problem.
I am training with the Dutch world cup team this season and the camp in Hintertux was the start of that. I have worked with their coach Frank briefly a few years ago and really liked his coaching and there are also two great riders on the team, Bell and Cleve so when the opportunity came up to train with them this season I was delighted.

I got some really good training in Hintertux, the last two seasons I haven’t had much time on snow away from competition because of injury and funding problems so it was great to have two months solid on the snow with no interruptions so I could concentrate on the parts of my technique which needed the most work. I really feel like I have improved since the start of the camp and my confidence has grown greatly, I am very much looking forward to the first competition of the season.

I had a small brake when I went to an event for one of my sponsors, Neteller. They were hosting a party in the Ice bar in London for their VIP users of the NETELLER eWallet service and they invited me along. It was a really fun night and there were plenty of challengers to me on the Wii snowboarding game Neteller had provided. There were some pretty impressive times recorded on the game and the fastest and slowest of the night won prizes.
The only bad thing which happened in Hintertux was in the 5th week I fell in training, hit my head hard enough to crack the back of my helmet and got a concussion. I had a short term memory of about 1 ½ minutes for a few hours (much to the amusement of my team mates) then a head ache for 6 days. I was advised by the doctor to avoid anything which may result in me hitting my head and strenuous exercise until my head ache had gone away. I couldn’t watch TV or look at a computer screen for long without making head feel worse either so to say I had a boring week would be an understatement! There was no permanent damage though and I have a new helmet now so all is well.

I have a few days off snow now before I fly out to Colorado on the 11th of December for the first world cup of the 2011/2012 season which is in Telluride, Colorado. Telluride is a super nice ski resort and I hear it’s been bucketing it down with snow there so hopefully the course will be good. After training on the big jumps in the park in Hintertux I am hoping for some big features in Telluride.