After the first week of training and sleeping I was getting pretty anxious to start the races. We had been skiing up at the race venue for over a week and I didn’t know how much longer I could wait. All the courses were marked and the venue was littered with advertisements, race volunteers, and the wind-blown flags of 30 countries. As the days ticked away, I grew tired of waiting for the races. I was as prepared as I was going to be for the Junior World Championships of 2008.

So I was relieved when the first race finally came around; the skate sprint. This was the one race that I thought I had the best chance of getting a top 15 or better in, and I wanted to make the best out of the opportunity. I warmed up as usual for a sprint and headed for the start. I had been seeded 15th, so I would have a great starting position and a well groomed, fast race course. The next few minutes were full of the final preparations and sliding into position behind the 14 fasted juniors in the world. Race time! I skied the 1500m course as best as I could, but there was an underlying feeling of fatigue. I didn’t have the kick that I usually do and no matter how hard I tried I could never find my rhythm. Fortunately for me, my mediocre prelim was just fast enough to put me into the heats with a qualifying time of 24th. Kevin Cutts, one of the other sprinters on the trip, had an amazing race and crossed the line in 9th. As I would find out later, I was 3 seconds behind Kevin, and the ten kids just ahead of me were all within about a half a second of my qualifying time. It was retarded how close the times were.

The heats were only an hour after the prelims so Kevin and I had little time before we were out on the trails warming up again. I was in the second heat and Kevin was in one of the latter heats of the quarter finals. I skied around the warmup loop one last time and did a 15 second speed with 10 minutes until my start. I took off my skis and walked toward the stadium. And that is when I realized that I was not wearing my bib. Panic set in as I tried to think back to when and where I had picked it up. I remembered that Kristina had given me my adhesive leg number, but for the life of me I could not remember getting my bib. I found Pat and told him that I had no idea where my bib was. I ran to my clothes and desperately sifted though them as 5 or 6 other coaches ran from van to van looking for my bib. 5 minutes till start.

I walked to the start pen and Kristina told me that none of the coaches had found it. Matt Whitcome ran the race juries office and told them what was happening. Meanwhile I was arguing with the start volunteers and trying to get the starting lanes. 3 minutes till the start. I stood in line with the 5 other racers in my heat and assumed that I was going to miss my World Junior sprint start. I was going to be disqualified. The other racers lined up. 1 minute to go. And when all hope was lost I saw Pat Casey sprinting through the middle of the stadium waving my bib in his hands. He tossed me the bib and I pulled it on with seconds to spare. As I strapped on my poles the racers moved up the start line. “Skiers Set!”. I slid into position and the gun fired. From there I had a decent start and maneuvered into 3rd. But I was not used to the intensity of European racing and was soon forced into the last position. I don’t even know how it happened. It was like they just teleported in front of me, and I was so flustered from the start that I couldn’t sprint properly (tactically or physically). I ended the quarter finals in 6th and finished 29th for the day. Even though a lot went wrong, I still had a top 30 finish, and that was good enough for me. . . .for now.

This is just after one of the distance races. The Italian school kids were crazy.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 1:35 pm and is filed under International, Ski racing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.