Wedge tunes up by training future stars of ice cross downhill

The 2013 ice cross downhill world champion, Derek Wedge, has come up with an ideal way to combine pre-season training for the next world championship battle as well as pursue his livelihood and even help train future Red Bull Crashed Ice stars – with a series of week-long summer training camps on Swiss glaciers and Swiss lakes.

Wedge helps run a new multi-sport camp in Switzerland that focuses on three different fields – downhill biking, freeskiing on a glacier and different high-speed water sports like wakeboarding, water skiing, and wakesurfing. Enthusiastic groups of participants have been spending their summer holidays in the one-week-long training camps that runs between July 28 and late August.

"Every sport gives you something for ice cross downhill," said Wedge, the likeable 2013 world champion who has become a national celebrity in Switzerland and is often asked for his autograph. "The downhill biking, for example, helps you understand speed, trajectories, reflexes and reactions. The freeskiing helps with jumping, air time and landings, and the water sports are useful for balance, angles and an overall feeling of speed."

Wedge, a freestyle ski instructor known around the world for his dreadlocks and the perpetual smile on his face, has always been a free spirit on the ice cross downhill circuit. Now he is helping 30 other participants at his X-Dreams camp get a taste of the off-season training that has helped make him such a formidable racer on the Red Bull Crashed Ice tracks.

"The X-Dream camp is for people who are really interested in getting better in ice cross downhill," said Wedge, who also goes jogging and plays golf in his free time. "We're all really excited about it. Because there aren't any ice tracks in the summer, you have to find a way to train all the skills you need and this is I think an excellent way to get ready for the season. It's all the sports we do in the camp that really helped me."

The camp run with the Swiss ski school of Montana begins with two days of downhill mountain biking in Crans-Montana, then moves to two days of freeskiing on a glacier at Saas-Fee and concludes with two days of waterskiing at Estavayer-Le-Lac.

"What's interesting is that every athlete has a different way to train, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses," said Wedge. "Everyone's come to the X-Dream camp has improved. It's been a crazy summer and a lot of fun."