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Heart disease is a women’s issue
(CNS): There are currently 42 million women in America suffering from cardio vascular disease and over 422,000 women dying annually in the States because of CVD. And while one in 30 women die of breast cancer in the States, one in four die of heart disease. As a result of the proliferation of the disease, speaker Kathy Tryon said, at the Nurses Conference held this week, that new American Heart Association guidelines for preventing CVD had been issued last year. These outlined that women should be exercising moderately for two and a half hours each week or vigorously for 75 minutes a week, be actively helped to give up smoking and encouraged to follow a DASH (Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension) diet high in fruits and vegetables and low in salt.
Speaking specifically on the subject CVD in women at the conference, held at the Marriott Beach Resort, Tryon, who is a clinical educator with Baptist Health in South Florida, said that historically CVD had been perceived as a man’s disease and that women’s symptoms – which differed from that of men and included fatigue and vertigo – had been treated as psychosomatic. Women had also been underrepresented in clinical studies on CVD which had put women at a disadvantage when it came to understanding how it affected women in particular.
While one in five women in America had some kind of CVD if they were between the ages of 45 and 65, this figure rose to one in three within the over 65 age range and one in five women were having mid-life strokes, with 25 per cent of those women dying as a result.
“Stroke risk increases 50 per cent in those people who drink diet sodas,” she warned.
In addition, while CVD was the leading cause of death among women in the US, strokes were the third most common cause of death, she explained.
Tryon said that CVD was preventable and that risk factors ought to be modified at a younger age than was currently taking place, even at inception, as there were steps a pregnant woman could take to lower their child’s risk of developing CVD.
Listing the non-modifiable risk factors associated with developing CVD, Tryon said there was nothing you could do about aging. Females, she said, had a 15 year grace period from the age of 60 over men, but once they reached the age of 75 their risk of a heart attack was just as great as men. Ethnicity was another unavoidable risk factor, with black women more at risk than white, and family history was another unchangeable factor as to whether a person would go on to develop the disease.
Smoking was one such risk factor which could be modified, however, she stated. “It contributes to so much and is compounded by birth control pills’ she said. “You are just setting yourself up for disaster.”
She went on to say that heart studies had shown that smoking as little as one to four cigarettes a day increased your risk of heart disease and every cigarette took seven minutes off your life.
The problem of obesity, which led to diabetes, hypertension and other risk factors, was also becoming increasingly worse, Tryon explained, with the World Health Organisation reporting that 1 billion people in the world were currently overweight and 300 million obese. That figure was set to rise to 42 per cent of the world’s population becoming overweight or obese if trends continued, she said. Keeping your Body Mass Index within the normal range was also important, she said.
As well as widely known risk factors for CVD which include high blood pressure (hypertension) and high cholesterol and high blood sugar, other risk factors that Tryon discussed included sleep deprivation.
“A study just out found that women who work shifts of 12 hours were more at risk of a stroke or CVD,” she said.
According to the AHA classification of heart disease in women, exercising regularly meant women were less likely to develop CVD. The AHA recommends women should be exercising moderately for two and a half hours each week or vigorously for 75 minutes a week, or a mix of both, Tryon explained. Following a DASH diet, which means Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension also put women in a lower risk category for developing CVD, included consuming less salt, eating more fruit and vegetables and drinking alcohol in moderation.
Risk factors for CVD unique to women included taking oral contraceptives, suffering from poly-cystic ovarian syndrome, suffering preeclampsia or gestational diabetes or bleeding during the third trimester during pregnancy, she explained.
JA political parties probe fraudster funding claim
(BBC): The two main political parties in Jamaica are investigating allegations that they received large sums of money from a convicted fraudster in 2007. David Smith is serving a 30-year sentence for defrauding investors in the Caribbean and Florida through a phoney investment group called Olint. Former Prime Minister PJ Patterson, of the governing People's National Party, has denied accepting $1m from Smith. The opposition Labour Party says it is examining claims that it received $5m. Mr Patterson, who served as prime minister from 1992 to 2006, denied "soliciting or receiving any such gift".
People's National Party Chairman Robert Pickersgill said the party had no record of having received money from Smith.
The Labour Party (JLP) released a statement saying it was aware that David Smith "was one of many contributors to the JLP campaign over the period leading up to the September 2007 General Election". It said it would examine claims that Smith paid $5m (£3m) to the party.
The allegations were outlined in court documents released by the Supreme Court of the Turks and Caicos Islands, one of the locations where Smith ran his multi-million-dollar ponzi scheme.
According to the documents, the two parties as well as Mr Patterson and Labour Party Deputy Treasurer Daryl Vaz benefited from donations made by Smith. Mr Vaz has denied that any donation he received from Smith was a personal gift.
Smith was sentenced to 30 years in prison by a US court in August 2011 after pleading guilty to money laundering and wire fraud.
Close the GT dump
The ecologically detrimental, aesthetically offensive, air and water contaminating George Town landfill is not just a George Town or Dart issue but it is a major threat to the quality of life to the entire Cayman Islands. The site is not lined and the drain-offs are harmful to our health and the eco system and will have a long-term negative impact on our tourism product.
A sensible and sustainable solution is urgently needed in the interest of the future attractiveness of this country as a place to live, work and visit. The decades long debate, research and political rhetoric has to date failed to advance us any closer towards a solution. MLA for East End, Arden McLean, has repeatedly indicted the People Progressive Movement (of which he was the Minister with responsibility for the landfill) for its failure to deliver to the people of this country a workable solution to the George Town Landfill crisis.
With a national consensus and mandate on the urgency for a remedy to the dump, the United Democratic Party (UDP) has proposed closing the George Town landfill, remedial development of the existing site, and the development of a state-of-art refuse disposal site in the district of Bodden Town with no direct cost to the Cayman Islands coffers. The new site would be properly lined and embrace best practices of waste management and would not resemble the current site that was not afforded the conventional wisdom of current practices.
As a resident of George Town who drives past the landfill every day and witnesses the stench and unsightliness first hand, I welcome this proposal. However, I am amazed that the long awaited solution is being resisted by a segment of the society, including Mr Arden Mclean and the PPM. This resistance is obviously politically charged because there is no obvious intellectual rationale against having the commonlyaccepted threat of the George Town Landfill being remediated and the processing of the national refuse being moved to a less travelled and less densely inhabited area of the island. In the absence of logic in an argument, politics is normally endemic.
While all people should have a right to object and state their opinions on matters of national importance, it is wrong for the objectors of the new waste management facility to embark on a campaign of misinformation and scare-mongering in order to make their case. At a public meeting in Savannah, on Monday May 8, several preposterous statements were made by the PPM representative for Bodden Town and the leader of the Coalition to Keep Bodden Town Dump Free, where they claimed that people as far as 10 miles away from the new facility would get cancer and a litany of diseases that even they could not pronounce.
If their claims had any validity, the hospital would be packed with the hundreds of George Towners who have lived all of their lives within a three (3) mile radius of the current dump – and clearly it is not! Furthermore, by implication, these objectors are saying that it is perfectly acceptable for the residents of George Town and the entire western end of the Island to be adversely affected by the mismanaged waste for the entire island, if its effect (as they say) is felt as far as 10 miles away.
No individual is desirous of having the landfill in his or her “backyard” but it must be placed somewhere. George Town, the country’s capital, has hosted the garbage dump and its residents have suffered for decades. It is foolhardy to perpetually compound the problem by adding more garbage to it. It must be relocated, with all modern waste management expertise employed at the new site.
Accordingly, the residents of Bodden Town will not have a similar experience as those of George Town who suffered from aesthetic, air, water and noise pollution.
Govern for the next generation, not for the next election
Fully supported, aided and abetted by his UDP supporting cast inside the Legislative Assembly and their advisors and party members, the premier has hijacked the people- initiated referendum and made it very difficult for the proponents of One Man One Vote (OMOV) to succeed.
The premier has done this in the face of 4,000 plus signatures on a petition, and the overwhelming popular support for One Man One Vote and Single Member Constituencies (up to 80 per cent) in all polls conducted in the media.
Why has the premier and his Government done this disservice to the people whom they claim to love and represent? Because he knows that if given a level playing field, the majority of the voters would vote for equality.
The UDP and the premier’s greatest fear is that this type of people empowerment will not serve them well in the next election.
The Cayman Islands Constitution that came into force on 6 November 2009 provided for two types of referenda – one a government-initiated referendum that is not binding and the second a people-initiated referendum. These referenda are provided for in section 69 and 70.
The UDP government has circulated a Referendum Bill, which they intend to ram down the throats of Caymanian voters using their majority vote in the Legislative Assembly, simply to achieve their objective of retaining the status quo that benefits them politically and dramatically increases their chances of forming the next government, despite their miserable failures during their current term in office. The UDP has no concern or care for the next generation, only for the next election.
The Referendum Bill, as circulated by the UDP Government, has two fundamental flaws. Firstly, it is not binding, and secondly, it does not commit the UDP government to implement single member constituents and One Man One Vote for the election in May 2013.
Therefore, the OMOV group, through the Leader of the Opposition, will be filing the appropriate amendments to the bill, although it will be futile if people do not lend their voices and support to force the premier to make the necessary changes which will give the voting public a fighting chance.
The amendments will call for an implementation timetable to be included in the referendum question, so that when we succeed at the polls, there can be no doubt that the May 2013 elections will be conducted on the Electoral Boundary Commission’s recommendation for 16 single member constituencies in Grand Cayman.
In addition, the amendments will make the results of the referendum binding and, most importantly, increase the chance for success by requiring only 50 per cent plus one of the votes cast and not of the registered electors.
I cannot say that we are surprised that the premier and his UDP cohorts are stacking the deck against the OMOV referendum. This action is typical of the incompetent nature of their administration and people only have to look at their track record on the economy. So far, for all the hoopla and for all their bypassing of due process, they have not been able to get a single one of their economy-saving, job-creating, mega projects off the ground. It's all been promises, promises. You would think they were mating elephants – done at high altitude, lots of noise and a long time to see the results.
Those who have benefited or are set to benefitfrom their economic proposals can be counted on your hands and have enough fingers left to hold a large cigar.
The UDP intends to continue to dictatorially and unilaterally deprive the voters in Cayman of having a system of equality and accountability, even if it costs them the election in 2013.
The only hope of getting the necessary changes to our election law to bring in voter equality and greater accountability and responsibility from politicians, is to force the UDP to make these changes to the Referendum bill or to remove the UDP from office in the next election.
The One Man One Vote group intends to continue its campaign for the implementation of one man one vote, in spite of the difficult odds and the government using the country’s resources to campaign against the referendum it has called.
It is preposterous, unprecedented and downright insulting to the intelligence of Caymanians for the government to call a referendum and them immediately start a campaign against it. The only logical explanation for such unconventional and irrational action is that the UDP wants to disrupt the democratic process.
This is vintage UDP/McKeeva. They have systematically eroded, ignored and abused the rules and conventions of good governance in all areas – the constitutional requirements (except for personal benefits), the legislative process, the procurement of goods and services, the awarding of contracts, the termination of contracts, the granting of duty waivers and the granting of other concessions. They have boldly proclaimed that in their definition and practice of good governance, "substance" is preferred to process. To them, systems of control and accountability, such as the Central Tenders Committee, the Public Finance and Management Law and other legal requirements for good governance are impediments and bureaucratic inconveniences that they are not prepared to endure.
The people who have a vested interest in the continued success of Cayman need to respond to these UDP bad governance manifestations in the most powerful way possible and force the UDP and the premier to change course before the good ship Cayman is completely grounded and destroyed on the rocks of Bush incompetence.
The people must force the premier and his UDP government to accept the amendments to the Referendum Bill and let the voters decide. The premier will only respond to large scale civic demonstrations and involvement. This is a similar to and as important an issue as the changes to the planning laws of the seventies and cadastral survey, which saw the streets of George Town full of demonstrators demanding their rights.
It is time for action against the UDP and its premier.
Let's put one thousand people in George Town on Wednesday lunch time for a meeting in Heroes Square to show the UDP and its premier that Cayman still belongs to us and we honour the sacrifices of our forefathers. Let's demonstrate to the world that we intend to put the good ship Cayman back on course and preserve it for the next generation.
It is time to govern for the next generation and not for the next election.
In the court of public opinion an explanation is required
When the letter from Mr Bush to Mr Thomas was discovered two years ago it started two processes, and should have started a third. First, it started a legal process. As in any case of suspected crime, the process began with an investigation, which may lead on to prosecution, trial, conviction and sentencing. The question in this process is whether Mr Bush should go to jail. It also raised an important question for the court of public opinion.
The public has no power to send Mr Bush to jail, but it does have the right to vote at general elections, the ability (we hope) to influence its elected representatives, and the right to honest government. The question here is whether Mr Bush is fit to be an elected representative and our Premier. To many of us this question is just as important as whether he goes to jail.
Those who suggest that the public should not consider that question until the legal process has reached its conclusion remind me of Governor Jack announcing the suspension of our senior policemen, without explanation but telling the public not to gossip or speculate. Completely unrealistic and completely wrong. The public plays an essential part in any democracy. It is important that the public should consider very important, very worrying developments such as the discovery of the Bush/Thomas letter. We cannot and should not pretend that nothing has happened.
Of course it would have been unfair and premature for the public to jump to the conclusion that Mr Bush had engaged in large-scale corruption. But the public certainly could expect Mr Bush’s explanation. Did he send the letter? What was the transaction under which he demanded payment from Mr Thomas?
This is one of the differences between the two processes. In the legal process the person under suspicion is not compelled to give an explanation. He does not have to help the police or the prosecutor. He can stay silent. But in the court of public opinion we can and should expect an explanation. And if no explanation is given, we can and should recognize the significance of that.
If there is a lawful explanation for the Bush/Thomas letter, Mr Bush could and should clear his name by giving it. The truth would free Mr Bush. It would also free the country. The suspicion that the Premier of the Cayman Islands is a crook is damaging.
But two years have passed and Mr Bush has still not given an explanation. He has acknowledged that he sent the letter, he has said it was a legitimate transaction, but he has not described the transaction. He has not tried to clear his name. Instead he says we should trust him – blindly.
What does he expect people to think? What can people think – except that he is unable to clear his name because the truth would put him in jail? If the truth would free him, it is in his interests and ours to tell it, and put an end to the suspicion and the investigation. I would like to hear what could possibly be his reason for not telling it. We would all like to hear.
It is not an answer for Mr Bush to say that his lawyer advised him not to clear his name. That makes no sense at all. If the transaction was legitimate, it is obvious that the best course for Mr Bush – in the legal process and in the court of public opinion – would be to disclose it. The legal process does not prevent him from doing so. Mr Bush does not need a lawyer to tell him that. He cannot use the police investigation as an excuse for not answering the court of public opinion.
The third process that should have started when the Bush/Thomas letter came to light was consideration by Mr Bush’s colleagues in the LA whether to continue their support for Mr Bush. The MLAs have the power to replace the Premier immediately, without waiting for the next election. They must have given thought to that, in the interests of the country, and in their own interests.
They must have asked Mr Bush about the Thomas transaction. They must have asked him for an explanation. If the truth would set him free, what possible reason might there be for not insisting that he tell it to the police and the public? If they concluded that their leader cannot clear his name, why do they keep him in power?
So now Mr Bush’s silence and the continuing support of his colleagues puts them too under grave suspicion in the court of public opinion – of something almost as bad as their leader.
If the truth will not set Mr Bush free, he has few options, none of them good, but his colleagues have a better choice; they can defend themselves in the court of public opinion by withdrawing their support for Mr Bush. It is late in the day for that but the public might forgive a repenting sinner who does his best to make amends.
What else can they do if truth is not on their side? Give up politics? Hope to delude or confuse public opinion? And how can they hope to do that?
Will Mr Bush’s colleagues suggest that large-scale corruption at the very top of our government does not matter? Do they think the public cannot see that, if it is allowed, it can only get worse? More and more government decisions will be made for corrupt reasons. Everyone will be vulnerable to extortion. The economy will take a nosedive. And we can look forward to the same fate as the T&C Islands.
Or will Mr Bush’s colleagues join him in claiming that this is all a conspiracy by their political opponents, or by the UK, or by the press, to frame their leader? Surely no one will swallow that? Who wrote the letter to Stan Thomas?
Or will they shout the famous line that a man is presumed innocent until proved guilty? But in the court of public opinion explanations are required from an elected representative suspected of gross misconduct. Now that we have all seen the letter from Mr Bush to Mr Thomas and we have spent two years waiting in vain for Mr Bush to explain, what else can we think but that the truth would incriminate him?
The bottom line is that Mr Bush and his colleagues must give the public a real explanation, unless they want the public to conclude that the suspicions of corruption, and supporting corruption, are well-founded and threaten the future of this country.
Mr Bush and his colleagues stand before the court of public opinion. We, the people, are the judges of whether their conduct makes them unfit to hold elected office. They are under suspicion of things that would make them all totally unfit to hold any public office. If they continue to stand together, refusing to give the simple explanation that would set them free, only one verdict is possible.
UK exams watchdog plans A-level reforms
(The Guardian): The head of the exams watchdog has signalled wide-ranging reforms to A-levels to tackle claims that examiners have been giving students "the benefit of the doubt", leading to persistent grade inflation. Glenys Stacey, chief executive of Ofqual, said the body would consult over the summer on proposals to scrap the modular AS structure, to make certain core subjects compulsory for all under-18s, and to introduce multiple choice questions to ensure students were being tested more widely on their knowledge. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Stacey blamed examiners for year-on-year grade inflation, which she said was "impossible to justify".
"If you look at the history, we have seen persistent grade inflation for these key qualifications for at least a decade," she said. "[It] is virtually impossible to justify and it has done more than anything, in my view, to undermine confidence in the value of those qualifications.
AIFMD causes headaches for hedge fund industry
(CNS Business): Recent changes to the Alternative Industry Fund Management Directive (AIFMD) announced a few weeks ago are causing headaches for the hedge fund industry, not least of which is the change of the basic form of the directive to a regulation, taking the discretion of its implementation away from countries and creating a blanket one-size-fits-all regulation. Regulators are also feeling the heat because now they are required to increase their level of oversight to include the enforcement of penalties to those in breach, with the possibility of legislative changes to support these new requirements. However, according to CIMA, Cayman is ahead of the competition when it came to considering the AIFMD’s implementation. Read more on CNS Business
Put away your ego and step aside, Mr Bush
The barbarians are at the gates of Cayman. But they are inside the gates trying to keep them closed to the righteous advocates of democracy and good governance. Caymanian nationalism is the latest pawn in this game of political control and backside protection that has been going on for the last several years. Suddenly it is un-Caymanian and unpatriotic to call for the Premier to step down because it happens to also be what England would think is right.
Some mischievous Englishman at the FCO caused the Premier to draft, sign and fax a letter to Stan Thomas demanding a payment of the balance of $350,000 for apparently accomplishing a rezoning of property on West Bay Beach. Some mischievous Englishman at the FCO set him up by having one of his associates illegally import enough explosives to take down half of George Town and he unwittingly involved himself by apparently ordering the release of the explosives, despite the serious nature of the offence involved! And some mischievous Englishman concocted some complicated circumstances which formed the basis for some other investigation of “financial irregularities”!
So the story goes that it is some English agenda, some English conspiracy, against the Premier, all cleverly orchestrated by the FCO. Clearly the English want to have Cayman fail and become another Turks and Caicos. They want to be stuck with a bitter pill three times the size of the one they had to swallow with TCI and a liability to guarantee of $1.5 billion. And they are committed to this objective because they don’t like McKeeva Bush and simply want to get at him? I am sure Mr Bush thinks that highly of himself but I can assure you that a country dealing with their own economic problems of a double dip recession in the midst of a political and sovereign debt crisis in Europe has more important issues to focus on.
Why is it that a country of intelligent people should accept any of the nonsense described above? It is completely illogical and defies belief. In the absence of an Arden McLean approach to immediately clear one’s name, you must blame someone else. Who better to point the finger at than the usual English boogeyman that despots of other current and former British territories have held up as a distraction to conceal their behavior and give the people someone else to direct their ire at?
Mr Bush is the subject of three separate criminal investigations, one of which involves the illegal importation of enough explosives to take down the whole of Camana Bay. And he maintains that there is no reason for him to step aside until the investigations are complete? Let me list some reasons why he must do that which any adult would comprehend:
- Avoid or minimise the reputational harm to the country
- Minimise or eliminate the potential that the Premier could use his office to intimidate or pressure witnessescompromise evidence
- Minimise or eliminate the potential that the authority of the Premier could be used to
- Minimise or eliminate the potential that the Premiercould intimidate the investigators
- Minimise or remove the potential that the Premier could generally interfere with the investigation
- Ensure that the investigation can be conducted fairly and completely
- Demonstrate that the Premier is not above the law in any way and is treated the same as anyone else in the eyes of the law
It is important to note that for the things under his control it is the possibility that it could happen and not just the likelihood that it would happen that is important. I am not suggesting that the Premier would necessarily do some or any of these things.
Imagine that the Commissioner of Police was the subject of these criminal investigations and not Mr Bush. Who do you think would be out there screaming vitriol against the Commissioner and demanding that the Governor immediately remove him despite his protests of innocence? He would say it just wouldn’t be right and it is incomprehensible that he could remain in office and expect an investigation to be carried out fairly, and anyway the Commissioner is not above the law and there is no way he deserves to be treated differently than any young civil servant facing such an investigation. If that was Mr Bush, he would be right. But of course his “substance over form” approach and his value of himself is such that the rules are what he says they are and he says they don’t apply to him, and his colleagues all follow the Deputy’s lead and curtsey in agreement.
The constitution does not have a provision to cause the Premier to resign or step aside in the face of criminal investigations because it assumes that the person holding such a post will be a man amongst men, possessed of a degree of honour and capacity to immediately recognise what the appropriate course of action would be. It assumes that he would immediately step down to avoid damage to his office and his country. There is a presumed back up if that assumption should prove flawed. The other leaders of the country should surely be capable of summoning the necessary degree of honour and strength to cause the Premier to be removed either permanently or temporarily in the best interest of the country where he is too weak as a leader to do so himself.
We appear to have had one question answered and will have to wait and see whether the rest are equally weak or if they do indeed possesses the honour and strength to put aside self-interest and shoulder the interests of the Country.
Fund directors’ database debated
(CNS Business): A database of Cayman hedge fund directors and the funds for which they act was called for during a debate on corporate governance oversight at last week’s GAIM Ops Cayman conference. It was suggested that if the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority allowed for a database of directors to be available to bona fide investors, this would aid in investors’ quest for transparency and accountability, a suggestion that CIMA’s Head of Investment and Securities said the authority was already looking at. Cayman directors and representatives for investors went head to head during a panel discussion at the conference, with investors airing their concerns that they had not properly spelt out their expectations of directors, while directors in turn agreed that investors’ expectations were not sufficiently clear. Read more on CNS Business
Cayman skier fastest 15-yr-old in Downhill & Super G
(CNS): Very strong late season finishes in senior FIS races at Telluride, Park City and Vail and two excellent runs in the Downhill and Super G at Mount Bachelor in Oregon in April have catapulted Caymanian Dean Travers to the world No 1 position in the International Ski Federation rankings for 15-year-olds in Downhill and Super G, two of the four Alpine disciplines published today. Dean is the first person from any Caribbean nation to achieve this. Speaking from Dean’s Winter training headquarters in Colorado, the young skier's mother, MaryAnne Travers, said, "Everyone here is just amazed by these results. Dean has been the fastest 15-year-old in the US in Super G but he has now reached an entirely new level.v”The results are the more remarkable because Dean had to recover from a bad injury early in the season, which kept him off the slopes for 6 weeks.
As a result, when it was time to race he had no start points.
"We decided to ignore the junior races favored by the European junior skiers and entered Dean in the late season senior races just to gain experience," said MaryAnn Travers. "This was a big challenge for him because he had start positions in the 90’s, inevitably on rutted and soft courses. It also meant he had to race 15 to 30 year olds, including the senior European racers at US colleges. But he started to surprise everyone with some tremendous finishes in the top 20 and then just got faster and faster.”
In some races Dean finished within just a second or two of the winner, which meant meaningful points on the FIS system, and he is now ranked ahead of the Austrian and Swiss racers of his age, as well as the North Americans. In one sensational Giant Slalom run in Park City, Dean beat the entire senior field. As a result of the Mt Bachelor Downhills, Dean moved frombeing ranked as the 240th 15-year-old in the world in Downhill to 1st , to add to his No 1 world ranking in Super G.
Dean has been clocked at over 70mph in the Downhill. He attributes his success to his coach, former World Cup and Olympic racer Jake Zamansky, and to his strength coach Ray Cook.
"Thanks to my coach and trainer I am very happy with the way the season ended," Dean said. "I am pleased that I have been able to build on my Gold Medal in the Super G at Whistler Cup last season and the Downhill, ranking the best. It doesn’t matter to me how steep or icy the course. In fact, the steeper the better — I like to accelerate on the steeps.”
Dean has worked very hard on a specifically designed strength programme. "I put in two hours in the gym most days," he said, “and then spend about three hours on the training hill at Aspen before we do the video analysis. The video allows my coach, Jake, to pinpoint any problems in technique so I can correct after every training run. The core and leg strength have also been essential. The longer senior FIS runs are much more physically demanding because they generate much higher speeds. But Ray has focused on this and it means that I can holdmy angles at higher speeds and get much more energy out of the ski."
Coach Zamansky won’t change the approach, he said. “Next season we will continue to race Dean against the seniors. He has certainly surprised a lot of more experienced competitors already. These FIS rankings in these two disciplines are a great indication of potential, so we are very encouraged. This could turn out to be something special.”
Dean, who races in Cayman colours and his custom sting ray and turtle helmet added, "Next season I should rank with the top seeds in Downhill and Super G. This means I will start on clean harder courses, which should be a second or two faster. Some of these late season courses in soft snow have been very difficult. For now, though, after I catch up on my homework I’m looking forward to a rest on the beach at Rum Point before I head to New Zealand for more training in July.”