 Steffen Hoos, aka "Hoosie", Toko's International Race Service Manager
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The changeable weather stayed constant
today. Once the weather gods saw off
the Men's Downhill yesterday, it snowed half the night until about 10 clock
this morning. Flakes the size of coins!
The Mens Combined was postponed until
tomorrow. The weather forecasters say that
starting tomorrow there will be a period of sunshine. So tomorrow is looking
good for Alpine ski racing fans.
Today the Alpine track was
completely soaked from top to bottom. It is important that the slopes harden
during the night so that it can be a regular race and not a travesty.
The control at the security
checkpoints to the venues are necessary, but I am happy to say that things are
much quicker now. This is particularly important
for us to be able to supply the team with products especially those that live
outside of the village center. Today we
were up at 5:30 am and needed 45 minutes to drive to the Nordic Venue. To get to the Alpine Venue, we only need 10
minutes because we are staying directly at the Whistler Creek site.
Despite the many Olympic
visitors from around the world, there is fortunately no real traffic problem. All of the race organizers and
helpers whose cars are not officially accredited are transported by a
well-functioning shuttle bus system to the competition courses. We are allowed to drive up to
just before the village due to our credentials and need to support the teams.
The test sections in the
biathlon venue had an unscheduled and long closing this morning which made our
work difficult. Normally we test and
provide the teams with a wax tip 2 hours before the start. This morning though the course workers were
treating the biathlon course as well as the cross country course with the "snow
cement" as it is called in German. This
dries out the snow and makes it hard. The wet new fallen snow from
last night and this morning was really slow.
After time it glazed up and became moist despite the snow treatment. Generally speaking, the surface was much harder
than in the past days and the snow changed from partially transformed snow to
wet new snow. For the technicians, this meant new
skis and new grinds to test. The wax
selection process turned out to be easy as the same waxes were still running
very well. You gotta love it!
From Whistler until tomorrow
Steffen
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 Downhill Start Area
 The View from Above
 Women's Biathlon Pursuit Start
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