Women's Super Combined and the Skeleton

It is halfway through the Olympics and it's hard to believe. It seems as though it has gone so quickly. The trailer has been a nice little home with all of it's amenities, and there are no more leaks.

Thursday morning is another glorious day with blue skies and not a cloud anywhere in sight. I start my morning with the usual chore of airing out the trailer because condensation has developed overnight, and I would like to have things dry. But it is easy again today because it is so nice outside as I open up all of the windows to let the fresh air in. I love the mountain air. It is so fresh and clean and I feel like I can take a big breath in every morning and store it to take home with me.

Today is the day of the womens super combined. This is a race where the women race downhill in the morning, and slalom in the afternoon. The combined scores are added up, and the fastest women receives gold.

So, I do my usual morning routine, of getting up and walking over to the village to watch this on the big screen. However, as I walk through the village, there is hockey on. This country loves their hockey, and although I like hockey, I'm concerned that the big screen won't have the super combined. I pick up my pace and round the corner to the big screen, and there are racers on the screen....pheww!!

The sky is gorgeous, and temperatures warm. I have walked so fast that I have to take my coat off to cool off. It is hard to cool off when it is so warm outside. But awwww.....being from Seattle, I soak in every ray of sunshine.

The downhill today is a much friendlier course than the day before where Lindsey and Julia have gold and silver. There are no spectacular crashes, no wild flailing, and no airlifts. It is a much less painful day in the downhill than the day before. At the end of the race, Lindsey Vonn has laid down another beautiful run and is sitting in the gold medal position. She is really not that far ahead of Maria Reisch, her friend and rival. Lindsey is a better downhiller, Maria is a better slalom skier. There is very little time separating them. Julia Mancuso is nipping their heals in third position coming into the slalom.

The slalom race starts and the slowest of the downhillers go first, so that you have to wait until the very end to see the fastest skiers. Each run is in the 45 second range, and the race goes fairly quickly. Elizabeth Goergl, who can excel in this particular discipline goes out of the gate at the top.

Slalom is a challenging discipline. I call it controlled chaos. It is a combination of quick footwork, managing poles that are slamming your body, looking ahead to watch for combinations and corridors and staying completely centered over your skis. There is very little margin for error. If you do make a mistake, you have to quickly "yank" your feet back underneath you and point them the direction you should be going. The poles come so quickly, that if you don't get your feet back fast, you miss a gate, and the race is over....just that quickly.

Of all of the disciplines, I like skiing slalom the best. Having been a former mogul skier, I like the quickness, of feet, and the quick edge changes and have started to tolerate the poles slamming your body. Protective gear makes a big difference. Although, sometimes one of my fingers might be caught outside my pole guard and get hit. It really hurts when that happens. In Super G, GS and Downhill, there is more time between gates if you miss your line. In slalom, you miss your line, you miss your gate. Game over. This is what happens to Elizabeth Goergl.

Julia Manuso takes her run, and looks rhythmic and solid. She lays down a first place time. However, Maria and Lindsey are next to come. Maria is up, and she pushes out of the start, and the dance begins. The best slalom skiers will look like they are not working very hard. It looks like a set from Dancing With the Stars. They ebb and flow down the course with light feet and a fluidity that looks effortless. This is Maria today. She cruises through the finish line well ahead of Julia. Lindsey will have to lay down the slalom run of her life to beat Maria, and slalom is Lindsey's weakest event.

It is Lindsey's turn in the starting gate. She pushes off with that determination she has shown this year. The announcers say that she hasn't skied slalom in three weeks because of her shin injury and the cards don't seem stacked in her direction. But Lindsey is a fighter. I was thinking that this was a do or die situation for her, and had my hands up to my face as I watched her run. She started out looking pretty good, but not with the fluidity that Maria displaced. Suddenly, it happened. It was so quick. Lindsey is missing a ski. In the ski racing world, you have to have both skis on when you finish, unless you lose your ski the last gate or so. Unfortunately, Lindsey is only about a third of the way down. On the replay, I can see that she actually straddle the gate, which took her ski right off of her foot. I, one time traveled to Sunday River, Maine, and lost my ski like that in a GS. I was still standing but my ski was missing. This is usually not a good thing. This scenario flashes through my head as I watch.

Just like that, the race is over, Maria is first, Julia is now a double silver medalist and Anja Paerson, who had crashed the day before clutches the bronze medal. I am so impressed with Anja's come back after a crash like that. It goes to show how fierce of competitors these women really are.

It is perfect timing for the race to be over, because it's time to ride the gondola to work. I check in to my area, and my friend Elianor is there, but will be leaving. I'm sad because I really enjoy her. Kate is on, and as I get to know her, I realize how hysterically funny she is. Now that some of the pressure is off, and things are running relatively smoothly, I'm seeing a new side of Kate. She points to the daily newsletter, the Icy Times, and there is a picture of Tanis, Candace and I in it. There is a caption on it about happy volunteers, and then our picture. Cute, eh? This is the newsletter that is distributed to the 700 hundred volunteers and 800 paid staff that work the venue. The rest of the newsletter had a word search, an area proclaiming the winner of the jelly bean contest where you had to guess the number of jelly beans in a large jar at the check in desk. There were 1058 jelly beans inside. The winner gets the jelly beans. So, this is our newsletter. The next contest is "who has the worst hat head". To enter the contest, you have to show pictures of your hair before your hat, and then with the hat, and then after you take your hat off at the end of the day. As a check in volunteer, I may be on the judging committee. I've never seen a contest like this before, but the thought of it totally cracks me up.

The Canadians LOVE their hockey. Since I've been here, I have heard many comments similar to "you may have your medals, but we are going to kick your American butt in hockey" So, today, the Canadians are playing the Swiss. This is supposed to be a no brainer, and open and shut case, a game played just to get to the next round. But, this is not what happens. Sure, the Canadians go ahead 2-0 at the start, and they relax. But they relax a bit too much, and suddenly, the Swiss are tied. There are people who know we have a TV and come to watch what is happening. They can't believe it. The game is over, and they go into overtime. The Canadians have many shots on goal, but the Swiss goal keeper is astute, fast and stops everything that comes near him. The frustration around our little TV is thick and our group and they cannot believe this is happening. In the midst of all of this action, a few people check in and I have to scan them while the game is going on, but no one really notices because the scanee is watching as I am scanning.

The game is still tied at the end of overtime, which means they will go into a shoot out. In the end, the Canadians win the shoot out by one goal. It is the talk of the Olympics here.

The game is over, and I get a chance to go up to the top of the Sliding Centre. There is a acreditation shuttle that volunteers and workers ride up to the top to do work. This is my first time up to the top. We wind our way up, and the shuttle stops at the top. I ask one of the volunteers where I am supposed to go. She says, "go up those stairs". So I did.

It was a great location. I was in the staging area for the start of the race. It is the place that you see if you watch skeleton at the top of the hill where the athletes are starting off either pushing with their hands for luge, or starting their running for skeleton. This is awesome. In the staging area are all of the skeleton sleighs, and two men walking around with a checklist going through all of the sleighs as they are lined up. I'm assuming there are regulations around the type of sled you use, and these officials are making sure every sleigh complies. There are coaches and athletes walking around and I am right in the middle of it.

The men's skeleton event is starting in 10 minutes. Two forerunners take off down the track and I can see their run and drop onto the sleigh, and then they disappear down the course. This is GREAT!! I love it. It is time for the men to start the race, and the Latvian athlete comes to the start, and the cheering begins. He is just about ready to go.....and a lady comes up to me and asks me for my orange arm band. Well, I don't have an orange arm band so I tell her that. She says that I need to find another place to go. I apologize profusely and exit, but not before the Latvian coach asks me the outcome of the hockey game which I detail out for him. The lady who asks me about the arm bands allows me to finish my conversation, and I descend the stairs to find a more appropriate place. It was a harmless mistake, but really fun to be right up there where the athletes are getting ready to go.

I find the appropriate area to walk into, and walk down the track and watch the men come down. I attempt to take pictures, but they go so fast that I only am able to get the slider in the picture 2 out of 5 attempts. This is really exciting, and the sliders are so near, you can almost touch them as they go by, if you're fast enough. I wind my way down from curve one, all the way day to curve 16 and the end of the race. The spectator area is packed with people cheering and yelling. As is the norm around here, people wear their national flags on their backs, put their flag painted on their faces, and wear baseball caps with their countries. I haven't tired of all of the commotion, cowbells, and noise.

It is time to go back down to my workplace. Tonight, I am working with Taylor from Ontario. He is a very nice man who has skied into the venue. You're not supposed to do that, and he received a warning this time not to bring his skis in. But, he smiled and said he had had a great day skiing in the sun up to that point. I wish I would have done that...It is Taylor's turn to go up to the top and walk down the track and watch. When I left, a Canadian was in second place. The Americans were well down the finish list and not in any medal contention, but I cheer every time an American comes on.

Tonight, is the mens' figure skating, and the last part of my shift, I watched Even Lysacik win the gold medal. It was a very fine skate and I was glad I was able to watch it from my little space in the world.

So, it was back to the trailer again after another day of adventure. I reflected back on my day as I watched the lights of the groomers on the Whistler and Blackcomb sides of the mountain. There were 7 of them that I could identify working their magic to create corderoy for the rest of us. While we sleep, the people work, and I'm glad they do.