Challenge Cup

What do you guys think of the new logo I half came up with for our team? I’ll have to change it a bit to avoid getting sued to death by the company that came up with the tshirt that gave me the idea. There’s a photo of the tshirt below it.

Anyway, in an effort to make my posts more reader-friendly, I’m attempting to make things a bit shorter. In this snippet I’m going to explain how I qualify for the Olympics. It’s done through the Challenge Cup, a competition which takes place this year in Konigssee, Germany.

Here's how the Challenge Cup works. In the world of skeleton there are two levels of competition.
First is the World Cup, which tends to be populated with the larger nations like USA, Canada, Germany, Austria, UK etc. Think of it as the Premier League.
Second is the Europa and America's Cups which is like the First Division. It's for all the small nations people, like Ireland, Slovakia, Brazil, Lebanon, Bermuda etc.

During the season the World Cup nations do their competitions and accumulate points depending on how well they do. They are ranked according to these points. The top 12 nations get to send people to the Olypmics so they're happy.

The other 4 nations aren't happy because they have to come down to the Challenge Cup and compete with the riff raff smaller nations. Just like relegation in football. In the Challenge Cup the top 8 individuals get to go to the Olympics. These places must be filled with 8 different nations. So, if the top 8 individuals are from different nations they all get to go. If, for example, there are two Irishmen in the top 8, only one of us gets to go to the Olympics, and whoever is in 9th place then qualifies.

Last year, I was only one place outside of qualification. I’m sliding over a second quicker this time round. The others have improved, but not that much. I just have to do it on race day, 12 days away.