Blizzard Shines Spotlight On Lara Colturi
The ski racing season is very short and very intense. There is no room to improvise, and to be prepared takes constant commitment throughout the year.
Lara Colturi, who at age 16 made her World Cup debut last season, spends her summer months on the glacier - an important preparatory period to make sure she is ready when she shows up at the starting gate.
Every year since she was a child, lara has spent the summer at les deux alpes, skiing on the glacier. "skiing a lot, even during the summer, has always been a habit of mine," Lara reveals.
The group of boys and girls who join the Ski Club make training enjoyable, as well as worthwhile. Summer after summer, Lara trains with young athletes who come from far away; from China, the United States and Canada: an international group of friends who have now grown up together.
During the long weeks of summer skiing, Lara has great support and affection from her family: "My whole family moves here. We always rent the same house for ten years."
Lara's mother, the Olympic champion in Salt Lake City 2002 in Super G, Daniela Ceccarelli, leads the family and Golden Team Ceccarelli Ski Club "relocation" to Les Deux Alpes. Daniela supports Lara, not only on skis, but also in training at the gym.
At Les Deux Alpes there are her father Alessandro Colturi, a ski instructor and coach, her 11-year-old brother Yuri, her grandparents, her uncle and her aunt, who is a physiotherapist, with her cousin. Not to be left out are the family dog and cat, who also make the trip and complete the family
The World Junior Super G champion spent her preparatory time in the French mountains in 2023 as well, but it was, for Lara a very different year than usual: "I didn't ski this year, I was still recovering from my injury I sustained in February. It is very hard for an athlete not to be able to practice her sport," she confesses.
This summer at “base camp” was different for Lara. no cable car ascents or sessions between the slalom gates, but rather training on the home bike, strength training and physical therapy. between training sessions, she finds time for walks with Bailey, her faithful four-legged companion, running in nature, and games with friends. she also enjoys helping her grandmother in the kitchen
Despite her injury, she is always maintaining a positive attitude and she "tries to find something positive even in negative situations.”
For an alpine skiing athlete, equipment plays a major role., the ski room is where equipment is prepared or "custom made" like the pit stop of motor sports. Given the same technical and athletic skills of the skier, different skis could result in different performances. As in Formula One or MotoGP, different solutions for distinctive conditions are needed for each course, as well as for each rider.
For the skis to allow Lara to perform at her best, she’s involved on a daily basis in the research and development process. it is of course a team effort, involving the Blizzard team, from design and production, to racing managers, ski technicians and coaches.
For each discipline, for each snow condition and course, there are many variables at play, and Lara finds herself testing many different options, "about 40 pairs of skis a season. It's a lot of fun for me to be part of this process and see the results," she says.
In each ski training session, not only does she work on the right technique and line, but she also tests different pairs of skis.
To better prepare and select the right equipment, "we also use technology," Lara clarifies, referring to detection and analysis systems.
The ski room is where the skis are fine-tuned with waxing, edge preparation, and many other operations that make the equipment fast, reliable, and performing. It's a continuous and unending process, because it is necessary to retune the equipment after skiing, to make them perform as expected and also to make them faster on the snow.
Alessandro, Lara's father, has always worked in the ski room on her skis. besides the role of coach, he has also taken care of the equipment, with Blizzard Tecnica.
It is a job of passion for him but also very demanding because of the constantly changing conditions of temperatures and snow, which "sometimes lead him to wake up at night to modify something on the skis, before a race," Lara reveals.
The service man is a strategic role, which from this season has been entrusted to Andrea Vianello. "A true expert," Lara emphasizes, as he has assisted very many athletes in his career. From the 1990s to the present, he has been at the side of professionals who have made world skiing history, from Alberto Tomba to Giorgio Rocca, from Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso to Tina Maze.
We are entering the competition season, and Lara is back on skis about eight months after her injury.
"it's a great time, just before the racing season, because i know winter is coming," Lara says in the third and final episode of the video series.
The training runs smoothly with Daniela at Lara's side, working on technique, strategy on the course, on every detail that helps Lara to improve her performance in the gates.
This brings Lara back to reminiscing about last racing season, in particular her experience at the Junior Championships in January. Despite competing with more experienced racers, she won two medals in her first participation.
"I had a lot of fun in the speed disciplines, I won the gold in SuperG. It was magical." After an underwhelming first run of Giant Slalom, Lara pulled out all the stops in the second run, jumping from 11th to third and winning the bronze medal.
She starts this season with a focus in the technical disciplines, slalom, "and especially giant slalom, where i had my best performances last year. three times i finished 17th place in the world cup." Her goal is to return to where she left off, among the best women skiers on the white circus. Lara concluded last season among the top 30 in the giant slalom circuit ranking and hopes to continue to improve upon that this season.
"I can't wait to get back into competition, continue to improve and enjoy every minute of competition.
