AST Athlete Journal: Luc Decelles
Hey everyone! My name is Luc Decelles, and this is my first year on the Alberta Ski Team. I grew up skiing at my home hill, Nakiska, with the Nakiska Alpine Ski Club. I raced my first two years of FIS with Nakiska Alpine (NATC) where I developed as an athlete thanks to the great coaching and the amazing training at my home hill. I’m very happy to see that a lot of my old teammates from NATC are a part of the Alberta Team this season. Last season I was a part of the Alberta Development Group which gave me the opportunity to join the team in Beaver Creek and get a taste of the Noram Circuit. I am excited to continue to push my way through the Noram field this season.
Being on the team has allowed me to train at the Canadian Sports Institute, an amazing gym where we do all of our dryland and get to work with our awesome trainer Nate. Dryland is an important part of our training with strength and fitness being the main focus as well as injury prevention. Recently we completed our fitness testing which was a great way to test our limits and see where we are at physically. It was also great to see so many of the younger athletes attend and experience.
The team had two very productive camps in Switzerland and Chile that have us excited for the start of the race season. The snow conditions in Saas-Fee were exceptional, leading to tons of improvements in the whole team’s skiing. I’d never travelled to South America before, so the Chile camp was a nice change of scenery. The early-morning sunrises and weather were awesome. I definitely look forward to hopefully returning to both of these places in the future.
We’ve just wrapped up a three-week training block at Nakiska where we got lots of mileage. I’ve enjoyed being back at Nakiska and skiing on familiar terrain. Tomorrow, we leave for a five-day training block at Panorama. We’re hoping to get much more training volume before our first race of the season in two weeks. We’ve been very lucky that the weather has allowed for so many great days on snow, and I feel that the team is very prepared going into the Norquay slalom races.
Something very exciting happening right now is our Sleigh the Bids Auction. This auction helps to support our team and our season. This is an online auction that you can find on “albertaalpine.ca”. We have some great items, my favourites being a family ski pass at my favourite hill Nakiska, and a really cool Calgary Flames jersey, signed by Blake Coleman. You only have until December 16th to bid!
Lastly I’d like to thank our amazing sponsors – GMC Dealers of Alberta, Genstar, Karbon, Mountain Fire Foods, and Gearup Mountain Sports. Our season wouldn’t be possible without them! A special thank you to Nakiska Ski Area for their support and all the great training. Thank you for taking the time to read my athlete journal, I’m excited to update you later on in the season once we have some racing under our belts.
