The Story So Far

Well after nearly a month of being too busy and being deprived of proper internet access I’ve finally gotten around to another post. To bring you up to speed, I finished up in Lake Placid and flew from Boston to London and on to Munich. That trip was a bit of an ordeal. In Boston the airline company, I won’t mention any names (coughAmericanAirlinescough), refused to take our sleds cos they were too heavy. The next half hour consisted of a combination of begging, pleading, reasoning and thinly veiled threats finally resulting in them graciously taking the sleds along with a generous overweight baggage fee.

Then we finally arrived in Munich we discovered that British Airways felt we didn’t really need anything as cumbersome as our luggage. It had been left in London. A three hour wait for the next flight made everything ok and we were on our way to Igls, Austria for the next stage of the Olympic journey.

Igls is a nice place. It’s just outside of Innsbruck and also where I first started Skeleton. The track there is easy enough to do safely but challenging to get fast times on. We were there to do some training and a Europa Cup competition, which is basically the European equivalent of the America’s Cup.

To cut a long, absent post short we slid well, got some good competition results and had a great time hanging out with a bunch of the American sliders who adopted us as their Lucky Charms. Everyone loves Irish people, it’s great. Now, if only I actually liked Guinness, I’d feel like less of a traitor.

Anyway, after Igls I headed over to Konigssee, Germany for some more training. Konigssee is a pretty little town in the ass-crack of nowhere. In an effort to maintain it’s status as an ass-crack town, Konigssee refuses to offer any reasonable form of internet access. By reasonable I mean other than an internet café that opens only when you don’t need it and fails to work properly when you manage to catch unaware and open. The other alternative is to drive around with my laptop on the seat beside me scanning for unencrypted access points, pulling over when I get one, connecting to it and hoping they don’t look out their window and call the police. I don’t like doing that, hence my prolonged blog absence.

One of the things I enjoy most about skeleton is the surroundings of the tracks. They are all usually located in places where land is cheap and steep, which means mountainous areas and few houses around to spoil the scenery. Here’s the view I usually warm up to in Konigssee.

The track in Konigsse is also Very Important. Again, note the capital letters. This is the track that I need to be damn good on in order to qualify for the Olympic Games. I’ve been down this track more times than I care to remember, I’m usually quite good at it, which makes me confident that I can qualify for the Games.

Except for one thing…. I’m not driving that well on it at the moment. What’s worse, in a way, is that my team-mate Patrick has suddenly started sliding very well on this track. Better than me. On one level I’m happy for him, I’m not such a bad person that I can’t feel happy for someone when they do well.
On a darker, more private level, I’m furious. Not with him, but with myself for not being better, like I usually am. This whole thing would be great material for some film where our hero’s fate is undecided, even though we know, deep down, that it will all work out ok in the end. Will Karate Kid be able to win the tournament? We’re not too sure, it doesn’t look good, the cards are down, he’s hurt his leg. Except, this isn’t a film. The ending doesn’t have to be a happy one … it could be a Quentin Tarantino film. If I don’t slide better than I am, I won’t be going to the Games.

But don’t worry, it’s not all doom and gloom. There’s still time to improve, find that extra gear, squeeze that last bit of speed out of the corner. In the meantime there’s plenty of fun to be had. At the moment I’m in Sestriere, Italy preparing to do some training on the new Olympic Track. If I qualify, this is the one you will be seeing me on in three months. This track is Very Important Too. I’ll let you know how I get on.