sestriere (ITA), day 2

Another morning of freeskiing on the downhill piste today, followed by live alpine World Cup-watching on TV. It was mostly sunny again this morning, but windy and colder, and by the afternoon a front had rolled in. Now it's snowing pretty hard and the winds outside are high enough to force closure of many lifts.

There's a saying in ski racing: "If you want snow, hold a downhill." Almost without fail the maxim seems to hold: we roll into town for some speed races, maybe get a few days of training in, and then like clockwork the storm clouds roll in and dump meters of snow on top of the course, forcing delays and cancellations as the course crew and coaches frantically try to clear the race line of excess snow so that we can hold a safe, fair race. We're all really hoping the snow doesn't continue as long as it's been forecast to, that we can get in a training run or two over the next two days and then run our races as scheduled, Wednesday through Saturday.