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| 2nd Place Team. Andrew on far left. |
Last week I was lucky enough to get involved with a fundraiser ski race for the Aspen Valley Ski Club called the Ajax Cup, the Ski Club's biggest fundraiser of the year. It is a duel GS race on the bottom of Aspen Mountain.
There are 12 teams competing and each team is bought by a sponsor for $25,000. Each team has four "racers" and a captain chosen by the owner of the team, then the AVSC appoints a J2 or older racer and an adaptive racer to each team. Every team also gets either a US ski team athlete or a former pro on their team for a total of eight racers. Since the field varies from intermediates to US ski team members, they use a handicap system. Sometimes you get to leave the gate first and other times you have to wait in the gate and then try to catch the other racer; it just depends on who you are racing.
The team I was on had US ski team member, David Chodunski; Bobby Moyer (AVSC J1), Vancouver Olympian Jake Zamansky's dad, Dave, and a few other people who were friends of the owner.
In our first round we did pretty well, I won my race. Then the second race we did just as well, I won again, so we were tied for 2nd. In the third and fourth rounds we got to race team Ochi. They had some good skiers but the most impressive part was that they had famous actor Antonio Banderas on their team. The third round we were on the red (slow) course and our team (including me) lost about half our races, putting us in sixth place. But in the fourth round we got to race them again on the blue (fast) course this time, our team won all eight of the mach-ups putting us back in second place. Before the fifth round they eliminated eight teams, leaving only the top four. The points reset and we went head to head in a playoff style, half of the people on one course and half on the other. I raced one of my teammates, Devon Cardamone. It was an intense race but he got whiplashed by a gate, and I prevailed with the win. That round was close but our team made it to the finals.
Unfortunately, in the final round two members of our team (who were both in the lead) fell right by the bottom giving the other team the win. So we got second place but it was really fun and everyone enjoyed themselves. At the after party, they gave away bottles of tequila for our second place team, but Bobby and I got gift cards for a popular restaurant in Aspen.
But it was a great experience that reminded me ski racing is about fun and the event raised $500,000 for the Ski Club.
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Andrew Hancock
