When we first met Shelly she was returning home to Reno after taking 7th place in the women’s moguls competition at the 2008 World Cup season opener in Tignes, France. Since then we have traded emails back and forth with a plan to see her ski in person at the Deer Valley event.

After France, her next event was the Nature Valley Freestyle Cup on January 20 in Lake Placid, New York. I’m signed up for the US Ski Team email newsletter (You can sign up in the middle of the page at (www.usskiteam.com), and I saw that she took 5th place, so I sent her a congratulations email. She responded, “I was definitely excited about 5th- skiing really well- just went way too big on the bottom jump and almost over-rotated the backflip.” That statement turned out to be prophetic for her next event.

At the 2008 FIS Freestyle World Cup in Mont Gabriel, Quebec on January 26, she qualified in 4th place, but had a bad crash in the finals. In her email a few days after the event she wrote, “Well last week was a little rough- did a backflip to my head in finals so ended up 15th, but I was just thankful to be ok because it was a very bad crash. But now I’m in Deer Valley and went and did a bunch of backflips today and feeling good about it.”

This morning Shelly and I had breakfast at the Morning Ray Cafe in Park City. We had a chance to get caught up on how her season is going and had great Huevos Rancheros.

At Mont Gabriel she said she landed on the top of her right shoulder and was lucky she didn’t break her collar bone. She’s been going to a chiropractor who said the crash knocked a few ribs out of place. She’s feeling a lot better now and had a chance to ski some powder at Snowbird a couple days before. I asked her if her ribs still hurt and she said a little when she’s free skiing, but during practice when she’s so focused on the course, she doesn’t notice any pain at all.

When we first met Shelly last December, she was trying to decide if she wanted to continue skiing competitively or start a business of her own. She explained she’s 28 and wanted to figure out what her next career move should be. At breakfast we talked about how she usually is very relaxed during her qualifying runs and typically places around forth heading into finals. But she said she tends to get a little tense in the finals, make subtle mistakes and doesn’t do as well as she’d like. She has a reputation of being one of the fastest skiers on the team and could place well, if she could stay as relaxed in finals as she does in qualifying. She feels she’s coming into her prime and with the 2010 Winter Olympics two years away, she has now decided to keep skiing and stay on the team.

I was thinking, “Wow! The Olympics. She’s on the US Ski Team. Good Sponsors (Tecnica boots, Marker bindings, Smith Optics, Predator Wear, HiBall Energy). Life must be pretty good.” However, she explained she doesn’t receive a lot of cash from her equipment sponsors, the team only pays for her travel to and from the events and her lodging while there, and except for a couple patrons of mogul skiing, she pretty much has pay for the majority of her expenses herself. Prize money is not so hot either (7th in France earned her $150).

So skiing is a career of love for Shelly. She’s looking forward to skiing well this season and the next and going to the Olympics. She’s also looking for more sponsors to help her get there. If anyone’s interested, she has a big spot on her helmet that needs a logo.

It’s now almost 1:00 a.m. Saturday morning. Shelly gave David and I VIP passes for the Deer Valley event. I’m taking my camera and hope to get some good shots of Shelly and cheering her on (and yelling, “Relax!”). In the mean time, here’s a shot I took Friday morning of the course with 16″ of new snow. You can’t even see the bumps! But I’m sure they will be just right for Shelly by the time of the event.

This is extreme outdoor sports for sure!

Oh yeah, and just a reminder that we have great skiing in Utah.