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Show Cammy Potter pulls herself out of the ruts Its the Catch-22 of alpine ski racing. If you want to be one of the fastest to finish a race, you should be one of the first to start. The larger the number of skiers who start ahead of you, the more rutted the course becomes and the harder it is to negotiate. But here's the catch: Starting positions aren't chosen by random; they are based on a complicated ranking system which itself is based on performance in previous "points" races In other words, good results depend in part on a good starting position. But to get a good starting position, you've got to have had good results. There's one way to escape this dilemma. You shrug off your poor starting position and go like hell. If you wipe out you haven't lost anything. If you make it to the bottom, you stand a good chance to improve your ranking and get out of the ruts. Enter Cammy Potter, a second-year second-year member of the Park City Ski Team. i ' Potter, who skis in the Junior n (14-15-year-old) bracket, had very little experience against national caliber competition going into last week's Western Region Technical Series. Under the points system used to rank the racers, PoUer was at the maximum (i.e. in the worst possible position). i So when the women's giant slalom was held in Park City Jan. 9, Potter started dead last 65th in a field of 65. But she didn't stay there. Putting on a performance which amazed even her own coaches, Cammy Potter hurdled past 40 other competitors to finish in 25th place. "We were really excited about that," Park City Coach Jim Clifford said later. "Her performance was a highlight of the week for us... She's . getting better every day." As if to prove it was no fluke, Potter turned around the following . day and almost duplicated her performance, jumping from 48 th place at the start to 29th at the finish. The Western Region . Technical Series, held Sunday through Friday of last week at area ski resorts, attracted a number of college skiers and even a couple of U.S. Ski Team members Bob Ormsby and John Walsh who are on their way to the Europa Cup. And it was Ormsby and Walsh who set the standard in the men's races, taking four out of a possible five first-place trophies between them. The fifth went to Rolf Bjoerne of the University of Utah. Park City's most consistent skier in the men's races was 15-year-old Jere Calmes, who finished four times in five attmpts. Clifford said Calmes did everything he could to make up for his disadvantage is size. "He'd charge out of the gate going as fast as he could," Clifford said. "He skied real well, and he helped his points too," Calmes' best finish was a 33rd in slalom at Snowbird Jan. 10. Park City's best individual result in the series came from Russ Shay, a lQ-year'old freshman at the Univer-- Univer-- sity of Utah. Shay finished 12th in a "V ' slalom at Snowbird Jan. 9, posting the 8th fastest time in the second run. It was a disappointing week for another Park City skier, Jason Lawson, who competes in the Junior I (16-17-year-old) class. Lawson finished only one race, the men's giant slalom in Park City Jan. 11, where he was 25 th. Clifford reported that Lawson had problems with the ruts in the slaloms at Solitude and Snowbird. "He was skiing real well,", he said. "But it was pretty soft snow and it rutted up pretty good." The five first-place trophies in the women's races were divided among four different people: Heidi DahJ-gren DahJ-gren and Sandra Steinmeyer, both of the Far Western Division, and Ann Melander and Rebecca Simning, both of the University of Wyoming. Dahlgren was the only woman to win twice. The older members of the Park City Ski Team now are training their sights on Sun Valley where three downhill races are scheduled Jan. 25-27. |
