I love New Zealand. Every thing down here just seems to work out. When I flew out of Boston two weeks ago I left with a rental car reservation, no slalom skis, only two pairs of Atomic GS skis, and a mere note of facebook tell my buddy Paul Frankham I was looking for housing down under. My only real concern was that I didn’t have many pairs of skis. But the moment I landed in Auckland, I ran into Rainer Salzbeber, the race director for Head skis, and after a short conversation the ski issue was solved. And before I knew it, Tschunti, Bode’s GS and slalom technician, was sending me up for my first day on snow with two pairs of GS skis to try. And for the last two weeks he’s been preparing two pairs of Bode’s skis for me every day- I’ve been mighty spoiled down here.


Sam Damon, my coach, flew into town a few days late, but it worked out well because I then had enough time to dial in accommodations before he arrived. We’ve had some great training down here with Treble Cone Race Academy and with their connections we were even able to train with the Austrian men for a day. Having Sam has already proven to be a huge asset and we’ve been dialing everything in. I’ve had 11 days on snow and today is our second day off and travel day over to Queenstown to dive into four days of racing at Coronet Peak. We’ve been hammer pretty hard with skiing and dryland workouts. The Head skis are pretty sick. I’m psyched to test them out the next four days.


Hope all of you are doing well, w

A lot has happened over the last couple months. I hope all of you are having a fun, eventful summer. I certainly am. I’ve been doing a ton of biking, crossfit workouts, sailing, and cross training. Yesterday I spent my day taking part in the first annual Olympic A-Z Sports Day at Cochran’s Ski Area, which consisted of 13 of us playing a different sport for every letter in the alphabet. We started with archery, basketball, cycling, dodge ball, eating contest, football, ghosts in the graveyard, hiking… you get the idea. Anyway, it was a full day of exercise and a whole lot of fun.

The main reason I’m firing you all an email is to announce, I now have a full-time traveling coach. Sam Damon and I recently signed a nine-month contract starting at our first camp in New Zealand. I will be paying him $19,000 plus his expenses for the season. Sam grew up in Concord, NH skiing for Pat's Peak before he matriculated and skied for Dartmouth College. Most recently he has been coaching in Colorado. I’m totally fired up to have him on board to look out for my best interests, coach, and do some ski technician work. It’s going to be a great set up.

In a week, Sam and I are off to New Zealand for a three week camp where we'll be working in mainly with Treble Cone Race Academy. I’m totally psyched to get back on snow.

That’s about it from here. I hope all of you are having a great summer!!! w

Dear all,

I thought it was necessary to send this email out to all of you. Bryon Friedman did what I've thought about many times, but every time I sit down to write a brutal critic of the US Ski Team I find myself so bummed out over the situation that I just never put it into words. Not to mention, when you're forced to work with USST, publically speaking out against them will only have a negative impact on your carear.

Either way, this is certainly worth reading and it's only the tip of the iceberg in my view. I called Friedman up today to personally thank him for coming forward. Ironically, he's in Mammoth at a USST camp.
Happy reading, w

P.S. If you click on the website where his blog is published there are some interesting comments.





bryonfriedman@gmail.com has sent you this article from Yardbarker.com.
bryonfriedman@gmail.com says:
Check out this article I wrote on Yardbarker.com Feel free to reply... Bryon

U.S. Ski Team Comes Up Short....again!

As they say, History repeats itself, and once again the U.S. Ski Team cannot afford to to fund their athletes, including me. After one of the best seasons in the history of U.S. Skiing (2 overall World Cup Titles, 3 discipline titles, 15 World Cup wins, and 37 Podiums) the National Team, led by Alpine Coordinator Jesse Hunt, does not have the financial backing to fully fund their team. What's wrong with this picture? As of now the athletes who are not funded include Erik Schlopy, who happens to be one of our best skiers and a 3-time Olympian, 7-time National Champion, World Championship Bronze Medalist, and 3rd place overall World Cup G.S. skier...again, what's wrong with this picture? Dane Spencer, also one of our best skiers, is coming back from a near fatal injury and happens to be a 2-time Olympian and National Champion. Oddly Dane was not even named to the team, even though this was his first year back after breaking his neck and crushing his pelvis. Dane and I were both given access to train with the National Team on our own dime, which is proposed to cost between $20,000 and $30,000 for the Season. Furthermore, Jake Zamansky (currently ranked 5th in the U.S. and 54th in the World in G.S.) who earned a World Cup spot by winning the Nor Am G.S. standings has been ostracized from the U.S. Ski Team and is not even allowed to pay his way to train with the World Cup Team...once again, what's wrong with this picture? Just wait; there's more. Recently the entire Men's C-Team was told they have to pay for the competition portion of their season, which will cost each of them $10,000. The C-Team includes the best up and coming athletes in our country including Will Brandenburg, who is ranked 1st in the World for his age, and Travis Ganong, who is one of the best 4 event skiers I have seen since Bode Miller. Do I dare say it again...what's wrong with this picture?

I'll tell you what's wrong. Our organization, or "company" as upper management likes to call it, has lost site of their core values. To put it bluntly, Jesse Hunt (our Alpine Coordinator) summarized it best by saying "the organization is not going the direction of the athlete/individual." This was a direct quote that I received from Hunt when I asked for help in my recovery from my injury. If the organization is not going the direction of the individual (keep in mind skiing is an individual sport, not a team sport) then where is it going? I'll tell you where. It's going to the pockets of the upper management, specifically CEO Bill Marolt, who egregiously recorded a $300,000 bonus this season on top of his already high $700,000/year salary (up from $559,880 in 2004). That's right, over $1million dollars for the CEO of a non-profit organization that can't even afford to sufficiently fund their own athletes...that's what's wrong with this picture! (Although I cannot find this year's accounting information as of yet, I have a reliable source within the organization that backs this claim). Either way you look at it, Marolt is overpaid, and although he is entitled to a good salary due to the stellar results the Team posted this year, his athletes are suffering.

What makes the problem worse and harder to swallow; is that all of us were told by Hunt that the Ski Team is downsizing because he believed it was best for "everybody." By everybody I'm assuming he meant executives like himself and Marolt, so they could cut athletic funding yet maintain his astronomical salary for a non-profit organization *(I make this claim in light of study done in 2007 by Charity Navigator, which keeps an eye out on non-profit organizations, and found that the average salaries for non-profit executives fell around $145,270). Hunt's poor excuse for a cover-up did not resonate well with current Ski Team members, as none of them agree with his philosophy to downsize. Furthermore, every single named athlete protested Hunt's decision to cut Dane Spencer, Jake Zamansky and myself because it was unethical and downright illegal in Zamansky's case. I say illegal because Zamansky actually made the Ski Team's published criteria for his age, and is entitled t o a spot on the team regardless of any individual criteria he was given. That's what's wrong with this picture!

So, to answer any questions about my position with the team here it is. I am not a named athlete, but I am able to train with the World Cup Team on my own dime, and compete for World Cup spots next season. My plan is to solidify my comeback and attend to the unfinished business I left on the hill after my injury. If you are interested in joining my comeback I welcome any and all support.

Thanks for listening...

Bryon

You can view the full article here.

I’ve been home for a few days now, but that trip was pretty wild. We only ended up training three days, but not because of the weather. The weather was absolutely perfect for our entire stay. For Bode the main objective was to find or help develop good slalom skis. And after two days of slalom training he was psyched with two models. The days we skied slalom we’d drive up the 30 minute access road to arrive half way up Kauntertal by 6:30 AM in time for a warm up run or two and a slip run before we dove right into training. I was skiing on four different pairs of slalom skis taking two runs in the course on each pair. Bode had 6 different pairs so he only took two runs on a couple pairs of skis, if any, since he took a few runs on his speed skis before Rainer and I finished up in the course.

Either way, it was a sick set up. We were lapping around on a snow mobile and those guys were hammering. There were a few times when I was getting pulled on a relatively flat section where we were easily doing high 60s (mph not k’s) the only thing I was thinking was don’t catch an edge… please, don’t catch an edge. With GS skis it was pretty moderate, but with slalom skis it was certainly squirrelly. We were able to get 8 runs in before the mountain opened at 9:00 and we were off the hill by 10:00 when it started to warm up a little. The snow was great and the training was better. Unfortunately, we only skied one day of GS. The GS skis were good, but not totally money. Rainer thought it had something to do with the snow; but it seemed to me, I just couldn’t generate enough speed out of each turn. Perhaps that was because it was my first day on them. Usually it takes a few days or even a good week to break in a pair of skis. Either way, they have potential and we’ll see what happens.

After we stopped skiing we rallied to Heinz, Bode’s speed tech, house in Lustenau, Austria for a few days to play some golf and hang out on his boat before Forest and I ripped over to Patsch to take care of some things. It was a killer trip and I hope there are more of them in my future.

Hope all of you are doing well. GO CELTICS!! w