She has been a part of this blog from Day 1 and ever since you have known her simply as N., but to me and the people lucky enough to know her, she was always more then just a letter N. For that reason, her name will be used in full length for the 1st time in this very blog post “N. is for Nina.”

I’ve been in the alpine skiing business almost as long as in the business of wheeling instead of walking. The thanks to that goes first and foremost to my family. I’m sure I’ll get to blogging about that extensively one day, but today I get to blog about my N., who has recently officially become my wife-to-be, and thank her for everything she’s brought to my life.

I’ve been everywhere and I have seen it all, and I’m still surprised how little recognition girlfriends and wives of professional athletes get. An elite athlete is put in a situation where one has to perform perfectly almost every day. If anything is out of whack, the athlete is as well. I personally believe girlfriends and wives should (at least partly) be credited for keeping us in line. Still, many coaches I met think girlfriends, wives and families only provide distraction to the athlete and disrupt the process of training. Not only is it not always like that, sometimes their effect on an athlete is reversed. They become our most important sport psychologists, team members & coaches. They may not be objectively distant, but they do know us better then anybody, know when to critique, when to praise and when to cut us some slack.

For me, family provides a solid base upon which I can then build my life as well as sporting career. In the last 8 months, N. has been an integral part in keeping me sane, while my sporting world was collapsing around me as well as in great moments of success. Without her I am a worse athlete and a worse human being in general.

N. brought a lot to my life. Before meeting her, skiing became my life. I was on the path of living fast and dangerous in my own skiing version of Sex, Drugs & Rock’n'roll (truth be known, there were no drugs and no sex either) that could potentially lead to something overboard crazy. N. slowed me down just enough so I think what I do, thoroughly plan everything out and then pull the trigger. With her, I take more precaution to the things I do and am much happier in life as well.

I don’t care what anybody says. For me, you can’t spell WIN without N.

The day is finally here, when we can release the project details for Team Jakič Project X, single biggest promotion event in Slovene sitskiing history. Even just writing this, I’m feeling pumped as $h!t.

As some of you may know, Slovenia hosts FIS World Cup Ski Jumping Final every year at Planica, one of the largest ski jumping hills in the World with 250m of length. But it is not just the ski jump that is impressive. To achieve the amazing distances of more then 240 meters, it also features an exceptionally steep and long ski hill with a 78% incline at its very top, which translates to an actual 70 degree angle. In other words, every downhill skier’s dream.

I have started thinking about skiing down Planica ski hill about 2 years ago, but it was more of a dream then reality. But somehow Universe found a way to make it work. This summer, after completing Mini Summer Adventure extreme paddling project, I was contacted by Tomi Trbovc, PR of (able-bodied) Ski Association of Slovenia. Not only was I offered to actually ski down Planica ski hill in a straight line, but I was offered to carry the flag for candidacy of Planica for 2017 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships with me, in front of about 50.000 people, on opening day of FIS World Cup Ski Jumping Final. How radical is that?!

In the last 2 months, I have planned the actual descent well. I have talked to ski coaches and ski jumpers and went through numerous hours of video material. I realized Team Jakič Project X will be – by far – the fastest I have ever gone in a sitski. I will not make predictions as far as the speed goes, because so much depends of the weather conditions, but I will measure it with a GPS-based iPhone App called King of The Slope, developed by Swedish company Vattenfall in cooperation with Swedish Alpine Ski Team. It is supposed to be quite accurate, with a deviation of +/- 2 miles per hour. I’ll be looking at a big number on my iPhone screen when I’m done – for sure! We will also have a camera crew taking care that everything is recorded properly and a couple of GoPro cameras mounted on my helmet, my ski and my sitski.

I’m also very excited that Team Jakič Project X will be the first chapter in making our own Team Jakič movie, Slovenia’s 1st adaptive ski movie ever. We’ll let the title a mystery for now, but many of the things are final already. Mitja Legat from Legit Films will take over the filming and editing, we will have the guys from Helivideo.si helping out to create the true professional looking helicopter footage, the soundtrack is confirmed and finalized (fingers crossed we don’t get sued by any big stars), the screenplay is in final stages and we will be looking at an early 2013 premiere in Ljubljana. After that, we will release the movie on Team Jakič website for free as the goal is for as many people to see it as absolutely possible in order to promote Team Jakič brand as well as adaptive sport in general.

So, what I really want to know is … See you this Saturday in Planica?! I sure hope so, but if you can’t make it – you’ll be able to see it on Slovene national TV and hopefully on international live streams as well. If you are on scene of the crime however and a Twitter user, take a picture and post it online with a Twitter hash tag #tjprojectx please, just to see how many of you liked what we did.

Promoting yourself as an adaptive athlete isn’t exactly a piece of cake as people often have a hard time imagining, what adaptive skiing or adaptive sport in general looks like. So, Team Jakič has decided to make it just a little easier for you! From today on, we’re giving you a unique chance to follow Team Jakič on video through our own Vimeo channel, Team Jakič TV. In Episode 1, here is a little glimpse of a sitski Super-G training gone bad in Winter Park, Colorado. Hope you enjoy it and stay tuned for more in the following days!

March madness. A term so familiar to those watching college basketball, but on the contrary it has a whole different meaning for me and the rest of Team Jakič. You would think, coming home from Colorado at last, I would take some time off and tone it all down a notch. Well, it’s actually on the contrary for me.

Let me break it down for you. Upon my arrival home yesterday, I had to kick back into gear as far as college goes. I’m pretty sure my brain is dead again after the ski season and it will be hard to catch up on all the things I missed. I will also still have to continue to ski as the racing season continues for me until April 1st. Also, paddling World Championships are scheduled for mid-May and while I understand I will not be in perfect shape by then, representing my country is a privilege one should never turn down.

We will also be having a lot of one-time events. I plan on filming an episode of powder skiing with my friend Bine Žalohar and the rest of the Untouched Project crew. I would like to take part in Red Bull Home Run, a Red Bull chinese downhill style event at Krvavec ski resort. I will hook up with Mitja Legat of Legit Films to start filming for Slovenia’s 1st adaptive ski movie. There is also some things to do on the personal level – my N., my sister and my family to catch up with, my mom taking me for a spin in her new car, friends to go to coffee with, newborn babies to see, ….

And oh yeah, there is also the craziest thing I have ever done in the sitski – Team Jakič’s Project X. I’m sorry I have kept you in the dark for so long about it, but in a very competitive sport such as adaptive alpine skiing, you have to keep your plans for making history more or less hidden so that no one can beat you to it. As we’re finalizing the talks with the other parties involved, Slovenia Ski Federation and Legit Films, I really don’t want to say anything more until it is all set in stone. I’ll do a full detail blog post in a couple of days, that’s a promise.

Despite the impression this blog gives, I don’t really like speaking about myself. So, why not blog about someone else for a change? It seemed easy, but it proved hard. This blog was rewritten more times in the last 2 months then all the blogs before it. After all, it is hard to blog about one of your best friends, because you feel the story never gives him enough credit.

Another problem is that it is not only a story about a friend. It is also a story of one man’s dream, adventure and one man’s journey to fulfill his dream.

3 years ago, Marin Medak decided he was going to cross the Atlantic Ocean, not by plane or in the comfortable inside of a cruising ship, but with the power of his own hands. To prepare himself mentally and physically, he started paddling long expeditions in a small, 6 meter long sea kayak. But paddling a kayak was not the dream and as Marin says on his website, “I wish and I will.”, he never stopped planning the assault on rowing across the Atlantic, 4700 kilometers from Canary Islands to Barbados with a team of 3 other guys – Simon Osborne, Steve Bowens and Alastair Humphreys. For 45 days, they have been rowing 24 hours a day in 2 hour work shifts and fundraised for a good cause, cancer research. (You can visit their website and read their blogs from the way at Transatlantik’s website)And after 3 years and countless hours of hard work, Marin’s dream became a reality.

I was lucky enough to be a part of one of Marin’s kayaking expeditions as most of you already know, so I will refrain from repeating myself. In the 9 full days I have spent with him under pretty heavy physical and mental pressure, I can honestly say he is one of the best guys I know. I would have lost my nerves a million times, but though all the bad, he just kept the good attitude, high spirits and a contagious smile all along. I am proud to know him and have him as a friend I can always rely upon.

As I’m writing this, Marin is leaving Barbados and will be landing on J.P. Airport (Brnik), Slovenia tomorrow at 15.35 and will  then travel to Koper, where he’ll be greeted at 18.00 at Planet Tuš as a champion he really is. If you can, take the time to go and shake his hand and I guarantee, you will be impressed.

P.S. Also – for the ladies – he is very good looking and surprisingly enough, still single!

In order to be the best, you have to pick your specialty and pick it well. In ski racing, it has always been a problem of mine to pick mine. When I started ski racing, we only did giant slalom. Then we added slalom after I have expressed a wish to be able to ski slalom several times. You see, slalom was the event I have always loved the most watching ski racing as a kid. And we trained slalom, but it didn’t exactly go as planned. It was really bad and soon after, I hated slalom above everything. Bruises and all sorts of falls, that’s how slalom looked for me the first couple of years.

I haven’t started training speed until I first came to Winter Park to train with the NSCD. Speed seemed like a fun thing to do and it helped me ski better in giant slalom as I was less afraid of the speed. First it was Super-G, then Super-Combi (one run of Super-G, followed by a run of slalom). The last came the Formula 1 of ski racing, the most prestigious event of them all – downhill. I actually had to fight with my family for 3 years, until they let me start my first downhill at the age of 22. It was scary, but it was also the most fun I have ever had ski racing. I was on my way to become what Kurt calls “a speed merchant” and I liked it.

At the end of last season however my slalom has started to become stronger and stronger. Why, I will never know. But I not only became better at it, I started enjoying it. Granted, putting all the extra padding on my body still pisses me off, but I was on my way to become what my heroes of my childhood – Jure Košir, Rene Mlekuž, Matjaž Vrhovnik, Mitja Kunc (crazy part about it, most of them I nowadays call friends!) – were, slalom specialists. I even managed to grab my first top level silver medal at Huntsman Cup,  NorAm Slalom race in Park City, Utah. If there was heaven on Earth, it looked like a slalom course for me.

Every coach I meet, has a different idea about what my strong event should be. My dad says giant slalom, I say slalom, Kurt says Super-G. Especially in the limbo of this season, where I have no idea where is up and where is down, I have no idea what I really want my specialty to be and a million different opinions doesn’t help much.

I made this text-picture while we were in Park City and it got some attention on the disabled circuit. But I firmly believe in what it says: Big Boys Race Downhill, Smart Boys Race Slalom. The truth is – I was never the kid who did anything crazy, and to be a great speed racer you have to be able to push through and scare yourself every single run, and I don’t know if I am really capable of doing that. There’s so many guys who like to push it to the very edge and see what happens and so far I haven’t been able to find that in myself.

It just might be the case that I’ll have to forget about ever becoming one of the big boys and have to go with smart. But don’t worry, smart is OK by me.

We just arrived back to the hotel in Park City and I have time for a quick Countdown To Raceday blog post before heading into bed. It’s getting kinda late, but disappointing my (not so very) numerous fans is not something I have on my menu on regular occasions.

I really wish there was more to write about my trip to Park City, but as my man version of morning sickness (constantly sick, without the pregnancy part) kept me off the hill for an entire week, there is nothing to really say. After a week filled with movies, TV shows and ice cream (I can be such a girl, I know!) I got myself out of bed, threw the most important, the not-so-important and the-just-in-case stuff in my bag, packed up 2 sets of my Elan skis and got my ass on a van heading to NorAm races in Park City. Pretty straight forward.

Tomorrow and the day after I will attempt, what many consider close to impossible – to salvage my season with a good result. Surprisingly enough, I actually feel good about it too, and I hope the good vibe and feeling transfers to my skiing come tomorrow. We’ll see soon enough. You can keep your fingers crossed, it can’t hurt in any way.

As they say: it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog. Firstly, this particular (very cute and fluffy) “dawg” never gave up without a fight and secondly, this “dawg” wants it bad …

Every time I post a blog online, I start thinking about what to write in a new one, 2-7 days later. And with the kind exception of Countdown To Raceday series, I never seem to write about it in the end. It is not that I change my mind, it is just that something out of the ordinary comes my way and smacks me in the head. Like another stomach virus as soon as I got my bags through the door in Winter Park, that is still keeping me in bed and away from training.

As me and Kurt were driving from Sestriere to Ljubljana in mid-January, he said: “I’d rather have you overrested and undertrained going into Abtenau, then burned out.” That we never made it to Abtenau due to some virus, you know. And ever since then, over-rested and undertrained has become this season’s mantra. There is not a single race this year, where I haven’t come in as an overrested and undertrained underdog, trying to find a way to make his lunch money. It hasn’t always been fun – or hardly ever if we’re brutally honest about it – but it has made me look at life in new ways and be creative about solutions to the problems at hand. It made me value things I have forgotten to value and it has given me luxury of not being afraid to fail, because there isn’t anything to lose.

A couple of seasons ago I was at a EuropaCup race in Kühtai, Austria with my uncle Samo, husband of my dad’s sister Manica. Samo is not only a great guy and a good skier, he is also a good volleyball coach. I headed into a Kühtai race with my hopes up and high expectations. I finished the race, but I didn’t make the cut and couldn’t race 2nd run for 2 days in a row. I was nowhere near happy and just wanted to get home, away from the world and feel sorry for myself. And in that moment, Samo gave me the most important advice I ever got from any coach (and trust me, I have worked with some good ones): “Go back to the basics.”

Skiing, paddling or any other sport is just like life – you have to build slowly and on good foundations, otherwise it will come crashing on you. This season my luck is a little off, but more importantly what is really off is my basics. I have managed to bring new knowledge into freeskiing, but I haven’t managed to apply the new basics to the gates. I will try to do my best – or a Kurt would say, ski what is there – on the last couple of races this season, but mostly I will build my basics for the next one.

Not only have I failed my personal season goal, which was – for the 6th time in a row – to meet the qualification criteria for IPC World Cup, there is also a good chance I will drop out of EuropaCup circuit and have to fight my way up through IPCAS Level 1 (or NorAM) races next year. Funny enough, I’m not really afraid. In my life, I’ve lost bigger things before and have always managed to get out on top. Also, in the last few years, I have become a firm believer in a yin-yang balance of the Universe and with all the good going on in my personal life, something’s got to give.

Overrested, undertrained and slightly out of luck – that is just the way I got to where I’m at. So don’t give up on me just yet.

Hey kids, it’s time for another Countdown To Raceday blog, this time from Kimberley, Canada. I have raced here for the first time last year and it has since then become my definitely favorite venue on the NorAm circuit, maybe even World circuit. Another reason why I love it so much is the fact that it’s a speed week, consisting of 4 downhill training runs over the span of 2 days, followed by 2 downhill races and 2 Super-G races. While the course is not especially difficult, it is neither especially easy and the speeds of top sitskiers easily reach 90 kilometers per hour. Flying down the hill with that kind of speed, scaring yourself $h!tless every time is an insane amount of fun – at least for anybody as crazy as we are.

I joined the NSCD team in Winter Park for what were meant to be 4 Super-G training days – my first and only ones this season – but the nature doesn’t read coaching plans, so 2 of the trainings got cancelled as Winter Park was getting 10-15 centimeters of powder every day. We left Winter Park on Sunday, driving the van down to Denver. My bad luck that keeps hitting me on the head all season struck again and I have been the first casualty of a stomach virus, that got many of us glued to toilet seats for that night. I was basically ready to stay in Denver, not knowing whether I can travel for that long without another stomach virus incident, but the boys convinced me to come with them anyway. Corey’s pills saved most of my problems and off we flew to Spokane (Washington), rented a car and a cargo van and drove to Kimberley, Canada. It was a fun ride that overrode the feelings of being tired from the travels.

The first day definitely didn’t go as planned for me as my ski bindings kept releasing on a hole in the course that formed up at Gate 2. Twice, I had to get help from the course workers to put my ski back in and get me back on course. I didn’t feel very good as I was constantly pulling off some rookie mistakes, like keeping the ski flat instead of on edge between gates, which makes it feel slightly out of control all the time. Also, since my recorded times included the time it took to get me back to the binding, I had no idea how I’m ranked in the pack.

Sadly, the 2nd day wasn’t any better. My ski released again by the hole at Gate 2 and frustrated to the point of quitting, I was ready to skip training run number 4 altogether. As Scott convinced me to give it another try, we turned the stiffness of the sitski shock up to help with the issue. Also, NSCD program director Eric asked Scott to change my skis with the skis of a teammate. I was skeptical about the idea, as my binding was releasing when pinned (meaning, there was a plastic block in the back to prevent the release), and the new binding wasn’t pinned at all. But as an athlete, I tend to listen to the coaches even when I don’t fully agree with them, so I went with it. Gate 2 came again, my line was good this time around, but the back of my binding released again and I landed the ski and broke it. As the Australian coach Steve was picking me up, he looked at me and said: “Man, you’re having zero fun, huh?” I had to say, despite looking forward to Kimberley all year long, this was frustrating beyond belief.

After the day was over I spoke with the coaches, and we have come to an agreement that it is better for me to skip the downhill races, go freeski and concentrate on both Super-G races. It was a difficult decision for me, but it has proved to be a good one. I got up a little later then usual and freeskied some Super-G turns, keeping my focus on leveling the shoulders, good upper and lower body separation and keeping the vision down the hill. It was a great day, and I felt really good about figuring out something new about my skiing once again.

2 Super-G races tomorrow. We will try to attach metal wings to the side of the footplate, just to be 200% sure the footplate stays in the binding. Let’s hope my bad luck will be sound asleep this time around…

Long time ago, before I became a semi-professional adaptive ski racer – meaning I train full time halfway across the globe & make zero money doing it – I decided on one thing: when it stops being fun, I’m done with ski racing or any other sport for that matter. It may seem like something a quitter would say, but for me it holds a very important truth: you should get out of a sport before it ruins the image you have made about it through the years of dedication and hard work.

The reality of it is – it may come as a shock to you – that I have flirted with retirement many many times this season. The reason for it is my life has changed a lot this summer. For many years, skiing was often the highlight of my life (especially after high school, when my academic achievements went south) and the only thing keeping me on the verge of sanity and away from some serious depression issues that I had. But this summer changed it all or to be exact, N. changed it all. Ski racing lost a spot or two on the “Most Important Things Of My Life” scale. All my ideas about getting out of Slovenia and finding a way to be a full time ski bum for life in Winter Park suddenly disappeared. My lifetime dreams of creating a family – currently just a “2-person-and-a-dog” family, but a family nevertheless – that I have left behind in some dark corner of my brain until Mrs. Right shows up, have suddenly reappeared. And what is more, N. was pursuing it with the same passion and enthusiasm as me. The logical consequence – I wanted out. Now!

There were many reasons why not call it just yet. For the first time in my life, both my personal and athlete part of my life were perfect. I have just started working with Kurt Smitz, a coach I have always had the most respect for. I spent a lot of money on a new sitski, the best so far. N. often reminded me of how much skiing means to me and is a part of me. “Just read what you wrote about it on your website” she said. And then there was the scary part – the question: “What if I’m pulling the plug on the edge of glory – just a season or two away from what I hoped to achieve as a ski racer?”.

There was however a problem – all the reasons were about other people and other things. While my body could still take the physical pressure, my mind was out of the game. Growing up, I was never the competitive guy and what is even more important, that never changed. For me, skiing is the sport that puts me out of the wheelchair and makes me able to compete with the able-bodied athletes, test my own limits and boundaries. While I have always loved to train, but racing was usually pure disappointment. Every time for every race, I had to build up my self-esteem to pull off the best I can and then the single glance at the clock shattered it completely. And then, I had to forget about it and do it again the next day.

Spending the time with me in Europe, Kurt realized how far away from being in the game mentally I was. There were moments when I was torn between the mindset of a professional athlete, willing to do anything to get better and the family man in me. And that is never a fair fight, because for me family is above anything and everything. I guess I should have seen it coming, but Kurt did – much more clearly then I did at least. We sat down for coffee and talked about it. We shook hands and we remain in good relations. More importantly, we remain friends we were when we started planing the Team Jakič Assault at Sochi 2014 Winter Paralympics.

As so many times in my life, I see the amazing clarity of the situation when the world around me starts to shatter. I realized how much fun I have skiing and how for me, skiing was never ski racing. Skiing is not a sport, it is a way of life and in my life, I want to be a skier. I want to ski the perfectly groomed slopes early in the morning. I want to train in the gates until I can achieve that one perfect run. I want to race downhill and Super-G, even if I’m not good at it, just because it is fun. But I also want to see how fast a sitski can go. I want to ski in deep powder with my friends. I want to hang around the snowboard park and try hitting jumps with a sitski. I want to race sitskiers cross, just to see how it feels. I want to get up late and show up at the ski resort well after the opening hour. I want to just go ski for 2 runs instead of 10.

So, from now on I plan on skiing like Bode Miller – even if my bib number is extremely high, even if the clock says I ski like $h!t – and sadly it often does exactly that – I will ski for myself. I will not ski for points, I will not ski for medals, I will not ski for trying to beat the best. I will ski because it is fun and it is all coming to an end. Maybe my last season is in 2014, maybe it’s this one. Maybe this is my last Winter Park tour, training and racing as a part of NSCD. As of tomorrow, points and rankings can kiss my sexy Paralympic butt (don’t laugh – ask N., she’ll tell you it’s true), because having fun is all it’s in it for me.

One day – maybe soon, maybe not – I plan on waving ski racing goodbye with a raised up head and with a smile on my face. And after I roll out of ski racing, I will be the skier I always was and always wanted to be.