Mammoth Mountain, CA (Thursday, May 15, 2003) - The U.S. women's alpine squad is completing "an absolutely awesome" two-week training camp at Mammoth Mountain that has seen a mix of speed and technical racing drills, Head Coach Patrick Riml said Wednesday night. The Europa Cup and development camps at Mount Hood got similar high marks.

"We've gotten an unbelievable amount of things done," Riml said on the eve of the camp's final training sessions. "The Race Department here at Mammoth has been incredibly helpful for us in getting so much done. We've had some wind, had some snowstorms coming in...we even had more snow again today."

Daily on-snow training begin at 7 a.m., according to Riml, and has been rolling into mid-afternoon. The camp concludes Thursday with one final morning session.

"The women have been super-motivated and have been doing a great job," he said. "We've had a lot of different stuff going on; the first part was more focused on speed; we did some boot testing and these last four days are where we've focused on some new things have been awesome, too. Everybody's getting to know each other and there's a really solid team feeling forming. It's great to see something like this.

"We've had a lot of video sessions, a lot of working on good relationships. It's exciting to see this taking place."

In addition to Riml, running his first camp as head coach, Alex Hoedlmoser is the new downhill/super G coach while Wolfgang (Wolfi) Erharter is the new slalom/GS head coach. Kristina Koznick (Burnsville, MN), who trained independently for three seasons, rejoined the team seamlessly, he said. "It's good to have 'Koz' with us," the coach said.

Riml said Europa Cup and development teams were having equally successful training camps at Mount Bachelor, OR. The development group finished last week and Europa Cup racers wrap up their camp Thursday, too.

All A,B, C, and development athletes were at the camps, according to Riml, except for Caroline Lalive (Steamboat Springs, CO) and Katie Monahan (Aspen, CO), who are still in recovery mode following full knee surgeries while Alison Powers (Winter Park, CO) is rehabbing after arthroscopic surgery on her left kneecap. "When they're ready, we'll have Caroline, Powy and Katie back, too," he said.

The next camps are set with the development team training at Mount Hood in July while the speed group trains in Chile and the tech skiers head to New Zealand.