AST Athlete Journal: Aidan Kometz

Hello again,

This is now my third athlete journal of the season so if you haven’t read one yet, my name is Aidan Kometz and this is my first year on the Alberta Ski Team. Our season is coming to an end as we wrap up the final series at Nakiska. We got off two slaloms but then got hit by some unfortunate weather and two days were cancelled. That’s just one of those things with skiing that is so unpredictable. A phrase I have been told throughout skiing that pretty accurately describes skiing the past couple months is “Control the Controllables”. Applying this would be doing dryland, staying positive, reviewing video and anything beneficial that can be done on a weather day. Since my last athlete journal we have raced Nationals at Red Mountain, some Super-G at Kimberley, NORAM finals at Panorama, and now Nakiska. Every series has been affected by warm or wet weather. We lost 5 starts at Red, 3 speed starts at Pano, and now more at Nakiska. However, I think the team has been doing a great job staying positive and optimistic with distractions and entertainment. My favourite memories from the past month have been playing volleyball with the BC Team in Invermere in the afternoons and trying out golfing on a cancelled day!

Now for a more individual athletic perspective. Like the rest of my season I have been struggling with GS and SL while doing decent in Super-G and Downhill. The biggest challenge I face and put on myself with technical skiing is staying focused and completing one great run that demonstrates my skiing ability. I often find myself going too straight and cutting myself off. It’s an old habit that I need to break. I need to trust myself and my skis to go farther across the hill and attack the turn, also making sure I fully complete my turn. Doing this should help not only my times, but my finish rate as well. The technical disciplines don’t come to me as easy as the speed ones. It feels the same as how humanities like english or social studies were just simply harder then sciences or maths. The concepts of speed and gliding just make more sense in my head then the skill impulse needed for slalom. I also enjoy the fear factor of downhill, not that any downhills I have done are scary but going fast is just more thrilling for me, more fun.

I found some success at the super-g’s at kimberley coming 8th and 9th (2x U19 2nd) and scored there dropping my SG world ranking under 500 which was nice to see. Sadly, we only got one downhill training run and one race at Pano. It was cool to compete with the National speed teams and get to start in the top 30 with the DH NORAM points I got at the start of the year. While that race might have been some sketchy skiing it was my best result coming in 20th, scoring NORAM and FIS points, and winning the U19 Canadian Downhill title.

While this season is coming to an end I am gearing up for next year already. I realise I need to be a lot stronger so I am going to be pushing my hardest this summer in the gym. I need to truly take advantage of preseason and capitalise on all the training and progress to be made. I’m also really excited to see what the team looks like next year. The Alberta Selection Camp is coming up at the start of May so it will be interesting getting to train with all my future teammates. I hope a couple of my old teammates come to ski for Alberta next year. I’m hopeful for these next two GS races and for everything that’s coming. I will even get to race against my brother for the first time next year. I appreciate everything that has happened this year. I want to truly thank our sponsors GMC Dealers of Alberta, Sporting Life, Karbon, and Genstar for supporting our skiing aspirations. Sometimes it’s hard to express it but I am also grateful for my coaches, teammates, everyone behind the scenes at Alberta Alpine, all the volunteers who ensure we can keep doing this sport, and my family. When someone said “It takes a village!” they weren’t wrong.

Thank you to everyone for the great year,

Aidan Kometz