Kenosha News

Home News Life Entertainment Sports Weekday Report Web-Only Content Store Services Classifieds

Downhill racer:

Somers teen gets a rush when he skis slaloms

Eric Thompson, 16, left, and his dad, Gregg, pose with their favorite skis in the ski-tuning and waxing room in their Somers home. ( KENOSHA NEWS PHOTO BY SEAN KRAJACIC )

BY BILL GUIDA

bguida@kenoshanews.com

SOMERS – “It’s so hard to describe. It’s like, you’re on the course, and all you have to worry about is making the next gate. You’re flying down the hill, and, if you’re skiing the best you can, you feel like a pro, like an elite racer.”

As Eric Thompson speaks, his eyes are alight.

For the benefit of a non-skier, he tries to convey the feeling of deftly carving steep, high-speed switchbacks, the impossibly tight turns needed to hit the gates just right, first this way, then that, while careening downhill in slalom and giant slalom competitions.

On race days, he uses diamond stones to hone the edges of his favorite, well waxed, Elan skis. “With sharper edges, you can turn easier on harder snow and even ice. It gives you better grip and keeps you stable on those surfaces,” Eric explains.

Relaxed as he is in jeans and a T-shirt while seated across from his father, Gregg, in the family’s lofted Somers living room – the “mountain room,” they call it – Eric exudes the excitement and enthusiasm that draws him to a sport that pits racers not so much against each other but against the clock, the course, the elements, and, yes, the mountain, but most of all, themselves.

Eric, 16, has been at it ever since his dad, a ski patroller and avid recreational skier, strapped him into a pair of skis as a 2-year-old. Gregg, who wasn’t a competitive skier, prefers groomed slopes and powder. He leans toward all-mountain skis for his outings. Gregg, who runs BCI Group, a Racine construction company, qualified for the NASTAR Nationals, recreational ski races, March 27-29 in Steamboat Springs, Colo.

Both have skied Mt. Hood in Oregon, and Eric trains there. They enjoy skiing the Rockies and other western mountain ranges, as well as the ranges out East and in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where Gregg now does ski patrol at Mt. Norway after doing so for 12 years at Wilmot Mountain.

Qualifying for the Junior Olympics in March 2007, Eric blew out a knee — before competing in four races, not realizing the pain he felt was a torn anterior cruciate ligament. It was the second time he blew out a knee. “I thought it was a little banged up. I didn’t know it was blown out,” he says without affectation.

He sat out last season to allow his growth plates to close prior to undergoing surgery, and he returned to the slopes this season. This weekend he will race in the Eastern High School Championships at Cannon Mountain in Franconia, N.H.

Two weeks ago at Lutsen, Minn., he entered his first FIS International Ski Federation competition. These events are open competition, with no age or ability level groupings. Skiers get sorted out by their actual performances. It was his first taste of going up against Olympic hopefuls and skiers with serious World Cup potential, including competitors striving to make the U.S. Ski Team, as well as former members of the team, in addition to other top racers from the Midwest.

Eric, who attends high school via IQ Academy on line, didn’t place highly enough to medal but gained valuable experience toward what it may take to earn a college scholarship in his sport, even if he doesn’t feel he is cut out to slalom at a world-class level.

Meanwhile, he seems to enjoy his time on the slopes as fully as possible while pushing himself to excel. The FIS competition gave him a glimpse of possible challenges ahead, sure, but it also appears to have whetted his appetite for taking on more courses and more competition.

If he rides his Elans this weekend the way he did Jan. 11 in the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association slalom race at Alpine Valley, Eric should have a good showing in the high school nationals. “The best ride I ever had was at Alpine Valley. I ended up winning that race. So, it was my best ride,” he says. “I said before the run, ‘I want to ski so fast I’ll have flames coming out of my skis.’”

“Yeah,” Gregg says, nodding from across the room, “you were really pumped up for that race for some reason.” Then, it’s Gregg’s turn to transport their non-skiing guest to the slopes by way of describing the indescribable, this time trying somehow to convey the mystical quality of breaking powder.

“I actually like powder skiing more than racing because you turn where you want to and when you want to, not where you have to,” he says. “It’s a buoyant, weightless feeling of floating down the mountain.”