Glorious day in the mountains !
An official practice day for Cross Country pursuit on the 3.75km red and blue.
Ski Jumping was closed.
Biathlon had the Woman's 15km individual start race, and Men's 20km.
In the marshal crew we were paired on key entrance positions. Our role is to protect the Field of Play (FOP) for the athletes. Not a bad role, when the sun is beaming down, sunscreen a must, and the mountains our background - I sure don't mind my volunteer job. My marshal partner and I decided to share our spot - allowing each of us time to head over to Biathlon to watch the races. I watched the Woman's in the morning - my first ever biathlon competition.
Luckily sitting next to an IOC press attache from Grenoble...who loved sharing her knowledge for the sport I was actually able to somewhat keep pace as to what was going on. The women skied 5 laps of a 3km race course, shooting first twice in the lying-down position, then twice in the standing-up position - each time they crossed through the stadium.
The leaders were constantly changing, even right to the very last group of skiers. The Germans were strong through the beginning, but landed outside the medals. Canada's Zina Kocher had many hopes resting on her shoulders. The pressure to perform with the Olympics in your own country is beyond belief... something one has to be prepared for as we've heard from background stories of Gold medalist Alexandre Bilodeau. By chance I met Kocher's mother post competition. I heard such a familiar story...on questioning what went wrong..perhaps her rifle mal-functioned - she normally shoots consistently - this is her strength.
Here Zina receives a hug from her partner in the athletes compound.
I was able to meet all four sets of parents of Canadian Female Bi athletes: parents of Megan Tandy, Rosanna Crawford (Chandra's sister) and Megan Imrie in addition to Zina Kochers mom and dad.
Just in case you were wondering...every missed target is a 1 minute penalty added to the running time. No penalty laps were skied on this race. In the end, the winner had only one missed target, and still beat bi athletes that had O misses - meaning skiing is a very important part of the race. The winner was:
| 1. Norway, | Tora Berger | 40:52.8 |
| 2. Kazekastan, | Elena Khrustaleva | 41:13.5 |
| 3. Belarus, | Darya Domracheva | 41:21.0 |
In my real job as marshal ...I was positioned at the bottom of Downhillers Dream (formerly know as the Toilet Bowl) for some fast descents today. Just for Chris Paella back in Ottawa, who asked if I could video tape this downhill - I tried. Here's a Russian descent (with wax tech).
The Jury must have had too much time on their hands today as they skied by me a couple of times...one even for a photo op: Dirk, Gregory(Russia), Uros, Thomas(Sweden), Jonas. These were important rounds that produced six pages of notes for Dirk and his grooming team.
Then time for a personal ski on the southern trails, called TOP of the WORLD. Stunning view of Black Tusk mountain. Even at 2pm, the tracks were still hard and fast. So fast that a 'rebel' ski of mine took me out for a good abrasive beating on 'round the mountain' trail.
We closed the race courses an hour early today, as temperatures started to fall in the mountains as soon as the sun no longer hit the snow. 4pm the groomers were out in full force.
Dirk was very pleased when he came home tonight. Grooming went as planned - consistent corduroy, less 'berms', good tracks that seem to hold up with the mtn sun. Tomorrow's race will begin at 13:00 for the Women's Pursuit.
No comments:
Post a Comment