A few words from Interski veteran Willy Boyd………
view from the top
First on the list was the Interski General Assembly, held in the morning down in the towns conference centre.
The assembly involved voting for the Interski President position and 2 vice president positions, then allowed each member country one vote on where they would like the next Interski congress to be held in 4 yours time.
There were three countries bidding to be the next Interski hosts, Russia, Finland and Bulgaria.
Each country offered strong bids, and any one of the three would be able to run a well organised Interski. Bulgaria ski resort of PamPorovo was successfully voted the winner.
From the information presented in Bulgaria’s indoor session, the resort is a great alpine destination with long wide runs going through tree covered mountains. And many modern lifts that take skiers to a range of runs from groomed piste to bumps and tree skiing.
The snow looked great on the video that was presented, coupled with what looked like very large hotels situated in the town centre. So it looks like it will be another awesome Interski that the NZSIA may be able to attend in 2019
The voting took a little more time to be completed than expected with Russia being knocked out first, then another round of votes between Finland and Bulgaria.
So the bus that came to pick the team up from the hotel did not arrive until 12:30pm, where we were then whisked up the hill to the ski resort of Carro Castor for the last time. Driven once again by our very skilled bus driver, who knows how to handle a large bus on snow covered roads.
Once there we had time to watch the exciting semi-finals and finals of the dual slalom held for the first time at Interski. But this only gave the alpine team time for one warm up run before we had to get ready for the final closing ceremony.
Parallel Slalom Finals
Cerro Castor resort has some great teaching terrain for all levels, as well as some good off piste above and below the tree line.
Over the week it’s been very inspirational skiing here and seeing so many high level skiers from all around the globe tearing up the hill.
Probably the most inspired I’ve been all winter was on the day of the Interski GS race, where the four NZSIA boys who entered the GS did us all proud, and the crowd around the finish line become a quiet hush as Tim Cafe expertly carried his speed over the icy rollover down into the flats to finish in the top 10.
The closing ceremony got underway at 3:30 with all the teams attending Interski making a final demonstration run down the demo hill.
We selected “The Diamond” for our final run, which is the most complex with multiple transitions and direction changes, with a visual impact of short and long turns in two groups 4 skiers making synchronized turns.
With the temperature being warmer than any other day of Interski, the hill was soft and quickly cut up into small bumps and piles of heavy snow. This made for exciting demonstrations from all the countries with close calls on some occasions.
And then all too quickly Interski 2015 was declared closed with the invitation for all the countries to meet again in Bulgaria 2019.
The NZ team will probably head out for a celebratory drink or two this evening, but with the knowledge that it’s going to be another early start tomorrow for our 9:10am flight out in the morning back to Buenos Aires.
See you all again when we get home.