Calgary Americas cup race #1

Ouch. I hurt. Raced today, and I got a personal best push!!!! One hundredths faster than I did during the World Cup here, a 5.98. My first run was fast and rough, I really get frustrated when you have a bumpy painful run and find it is half a second faster than your previous nice clean run, I guess it is because you are carrying so much more speed through the corners that your steering is out, hence the hits, but I shouldn't complain about a crap run and all my new bruises and pains when I got a my fastest time for the year. So I wont. I finished 10th after the first run and 9th after the second and came 11th overall, Kelly came 18th in the first run, 18th in the second and 18th overall, and only one athlete ended up in hospital. Nice.

The athlete before me on my second run crashed and so while I was waiting at the line there was a "hold on track" and I was sent inside then they called me back out to the line, then they decided to send a fore runner ahead of me (to check the timing or whatever), and I am in bob shoes which you can't walk around on the wood in because they clog up with bits of wood Io i am walking around on my heels, getting cold outside, ah the fun and games of sliding. My second run was less painful and bit cleaner, a little more satisfying... hence a little slower, this is a crazy sport. I love it. The girl who crashed went to hospital for stitches and xrays.

Russ (team NZ) managed to flip onto his back coming out of 8, he got back over onto his runners pretty quick and finished with a time of 60.92, which is crazy fast for crashing, he was aiming at a personal best, hopefully tomorrow he will get it.

I get the vibe that there is a little more cheating going on in Americas cup than on the world tour, I am really looking forward to next year when all the runners everyone are currently using become illegal on world tour, and then Americas and Europa the following year, I think you will see some changes. With standard metal the race will more on the athlete and not the equipment.

We both got really good start numbers for tomorrow (Calgary Americas cup race#2), Kelly is off 5th and I am off 7th, depending on the conditions, the ice can be faster for the first group of sliders so you want to be up at the start of the group but not 1st.

Well it is 8pm and kel and I have to get sanding, we use automotive high grade sandpaper to polish all the scratches out of our runner, so they are super fast and smooth for tomorrow.

Send super fast, high knee, long stride, quiet, still, painless vibes our way for tomorrow.


Hey Matt thanks for your email, keep the news coming, it all sounds exciting.

Race day today

We are off to the track in a couple of hours, yesterday training was alright, i did a time that was about a half a second faster than during the world cup, but I was real tired and scratched from my second run, no need to push my self this week. Kel was still runner testing yesterday, so we will get it together for our runs today. Poor Kel drew a shitty number again, and is last off, number 31, I drew a better number and I am off 19th, it is going to be a long day with 75 athletes to get through. I'll let you know how we all do. Send fast,quiet and stealthy vibes our way.

Awesome training runs.

Just got back from the track, I had a pretty good first run, so I decided to put my rock up even more, I have never ridden such high rock but I want to know how high I can go before I loose control, so now is the time to try it. So the second run was going fantastic, it felt fast and smooth, until the exit of kriesel, I think I was carrying more speed through the straight away from 8 and into 9 than I was used to (116kmph) and with the higher rock ( which gives less friction, a touchier (or finer ??) balance point, makes the sled more reactive and harder to control, but fast if you can get it right) got my timing wrong on the exit of 9 and came out hard, I was then late into 10, dropped a runner out of 10, late into 11, looped it, late into 12, missed my timing, and caught a 2nd pressure and was real late in to 13, looped it, hit before 14, and did this real strange skid while up on the wall in 14 (never done that before) and went very low into the belly of the curve then came out of the corner on one runner. It was cool, a whole lot of endorphins, I scared my self. Good buzz! So I was thinking I was going to have to drop the rock for tomorrow until I looked at my splits and compared them to the World Cup race. Well, my time through the bottom of the track was faster with that crazy run than it was during the race. And the down time was the fastest I have done this year (61.14)

I am looking forward to tomorrow. But I may be wearing a bit more padding...

You can all send your good luck emails, and show us your support (we need all your support) for the race on Friday by clicking here.

Here is a note from Kel to all her fans...."Hi everyone, hope you are all reading Lou's diary lots and finding out what we're up to. As you've probably read, this season has started off with a couple of hitches but, fingers crossed, we've seen the last of them. Hope all is well in Aotearoa and you aren't all getting too sunburnt (buggars!). Take care and I will be talking to you soon. For those who want to email me, my email is kel@surf.co.nz Later."

-5 , blue skies and sun shine, a stunning day for training here in Calgary

The ice here in Calgary is so beautiful, the track crew have made the smoothest, most wonderful ice to slide on. My two runs yesterday were alot of fun, the track is cut in a very smooth forgiving way, I was extreamly high on the exit of corner 9 on my first run, I dropped out of it and hit the wall but the hit was nothing, no pain. The ice in Lake Placid was so bad that I got a head ache after a run, so it is good to be on some nice ice again. Turc (Alberta Skeleton Association president, World cup athlete from last season, and good mate) and his girlfriend Natasha took Kelly and I out for dinner last night, where we had chocolate wontons with caramel sauce! YUMMY. We have been working on our sleds all morning, Kelly is having runner issues, but the main problem is that her sled is older than she is. We both really want a Davenport sled, they are very expensive, but most athletes on them have good results. All our runners will become illegal at the end of this season too. Any one want to sponsor us a couple of sleds and a few sets of runners? Oh well. We are due to be at the track in an hour but still havent found anyone who can give a lift there, we think Russ is in an exam, looks like we may have to catch a taxi. Good news, i have found a real cheap rental car for next week when we are in Germany, $500 kiwi dollars for 9 days! that is cheap (although it is a skoda!).

A rare treat... A sleep in!

How wonderful, today we got to sleep in, for the last two world cups training has been at 8 and 9am which meant getting up around 5 or 6. I am so glad training this week is not until midday.

Well today we did all our washing and walked to the gym, it is cold here again (about -15 during the day), and the colours are like nothing you would see in NZ everything is white or grey, there is a hore frost on all the trees and snow and ice on all the roads and hills, and a low mist made it quite eerie. The hot tub was much needed, and appreciated, but all my bruises ensure I get plenty of odd looks while in the pool.

At 6pm Kelly and I went to the team captains meeting for the Americas cup race, it is going to be a huge race, there are 75 athletes here, 31 women and 44 men, from USA Canada, NZ, Japan, Mexico, Bermuda, Finland, Israel, Lebanon, Australia, Brazil and Turkey. It was good to catch up with friends who are not on the World Tour.

Kelly, Russ and I are the only kiwis sliding this week, Ben has gone to New York for a few days then onto Germany for a few days rest before we slide in Koniggsee next week, and Liz has retired. But I wouldn't be surprised if we saw her back at a track somewhere in the world.

We slide at noon tomorrow, I will keep you all posted on how we do, but these two races do not contribute to our world rankings or our world cup/ world champs eligibility and I must try and consider this week as a training week and not a competition as I need the rest, this is a good chance to get to know my sled again, and play with a few different driving styles and settings.

I am hanging out to hear about what everyone is up to back home so email me now!

Back in Calgary

Well, what a couple of days it has been. Yesterday was race day for the Lake Placid World Cup, and from the entry I made yesterday you will see that I did not do as well as i had hoped. The last day of training went really well for me, i had two runs which were both about half a second faster than my race day run, which is a bit frustrating. After the race, Kelly and I went back and packed up all our things at the Shea's, and headed out to a memorial service at the Lake Placid Hall of fame which was held for Jack Shea, 1932 Olympic gold medalist, Jack died just a couple of weeks before the 2002 games where his grandson won gold in skeleton. After the service, we kicked back at the hostel where, the rest of the Kiwis, the Danes, the South Africans, the Scottish, and Peter were staying. The night after a race is when all the athletes get to go out and have a bit of fun, so we all headed out to Zig Zags for a few beers, and onto Rumurs for a bit of a dance, it was a good night. Kelly, Peter and I left at about 2.30 am to drive to Montreal, the weather was terrible, the storm that snowed on us during the race had shut New York and Boston airports, our 2 hour drive to Montreal took about 4, in very snowy, slippery conditions (Don't worry, Peter was driving and had got several hours sleep before we left). We made our flight in time and Turc picked us up in Calgary. On the way back to Peter Simpsons we stoped at the Speed Skating World Cup that was being held at the Olympic Skating Oval here in Calgary, we snuck in and got to watch the final 4 heats for free, those athletes have the biggest thighs you have ever seen!

Despite a poor race result, I enjoyed my time in Lake Placid (Kelly and I have a laugh where ever we go), and i am sure I will have a good result on this track in the future.

We are back here in Calgary for race 3 and 4 of the Americas Cup tour, providing you are not ranked in the top 15 in World rankings you can also compete in the Americas Cup Tour, not many athletes do this but I have done for the last two years. Competeing in an Americas cup race is very cheap training, we only have to pay for the race entry and we get 10 runs as apposed to paying for each individual run. Training begins on Tuesday, with races on Friday and Saturday. It will be good to get some runs in with out the stress of World Cup or world rankings depending on them, we both need some time to relax on our sleds and since we were here last week, we will not need to worry about what to do in the corners but instead concentrate on relaxing and enjoying our runs, and focusing on form. There should be about 65 athletes here for these races, which is huge, even bigger than the World Cup field... Skeleton is growing.

Oh yeah, for all my friends and family who are reading this regularly: drop me a line and let me know what is going on back home, I would love to hear from you all email me here

Take care,

Lou

Lake Placid world cup

Not much time to write here, this morning it started to snow which is not a good thing for race day. I had a very dissapointing run, half a second slower than the training runs I did yesterday, and finished 22nd, Kelly finished 24th and Liz finished 19th, I did however have a very good push, it was a personal best by one tenth of a second, but I wasn't driving very well in the snowy conditions, oh well that is the way it goes. Ben had a rough run and finished 24th and Russ got a PB by half a second and finished 30th. We are off to calgary now for the americas cup.

Moose lasagne for dinner last night...mmmmmmm.

Lake Placid World Cup training

We finally got on the track yesterday morning, since NZL was in the first group we had an early start and arrived at the track at 7:30. It was cold and snowing, about -15, and the ice was the coldest I have ever slid, it was -13. When the ice is cold, our runners (blades) do not dig in as much and we can loose a bit of control, well I have been carrying around a pair of "cold ice runners" which have a sharper knife/spine/blade (the back half of a runner has a knife/spine which gives us control while the front half is polished and rounded), I have taken them on tour for 3 seasons now, but have never taken more than one run on them. I decided to give them a go during my first run, but I had my trusty other runners with me just in case. I was also wearing my downhill mountain biking body armor since my bruises from the last race have not healed yet. Well the run was totally out of control, I did not feel my blades grip once, which meant that in the straight aways and transitions I was heading anywhere but straight. In the break between runs I switched my runners back to my lubas ones, and took a second out of control run. AHHHH. Very frustrating. Thankfully Lake Placid is a very forgiving track; you can have a horrendous run and not hurt your self.

Yesterday evening, Kelly, Peter, Jim and Judy Shea and I watched a documentary of the 2002 Winter Olympics, it had the opening and closing ceremonies and told the stories of some of the most successful gold medalists, including Jim and Judy's son Jimmy, it was a fantastic documentary, Kelly and I hope to bring a copy home, great for a bit of motivation for when you don't want to go to the gym.

2nd day of training, the two groups are in are in reverse order, so we got an hour sleep in. I cant work on fixing the track and getting good runs if I cant even steer the sled in any direction, so I decided to crank up my rock by 3mm to a setting that I have never ridden before and see what happens , I was very nervous, the sled becomes more reactive with the higher rock (bow in runners) and that is only good if you have the skill to control a more reactive sled, but the surface area you are sliding on becomes smaller and there fore there is more pressure, and hopefully you dig into the ice a bit more. I was so nervous that I couldn't eat breakfast! On my first run, on the exit of corner one I steered off and entered the long straight away between one and two and went dead straight, put my heat to the right just a little and drifted to the right... I have control. I am sure a lot of athletes would think that upping your rock is the logical thing to do, but us kiwis dont get time to train on tracks, and play around with our settings on our sleds, we just get to race, and if there is only 6 runs before a race you too busy learning the track. My time was alot better than day one, but still not good, so in run two I took off my body armor and pushed a little harder, I concentrated on my form and keeping my feet off the ice and together, as I entered the last bend I dropped my head right down, and WHAM, just after the last timing eye there is a 20th corner and I hit the right wall with my head and ankle, it serves me right, I wasn't looking were I was going, I was just thinking about getting over the finish line, but here in L.P. there is an extra corner after the finish just waiting to get ya..... The German physio, Rudy, has put a bunch of ointment on my ankle and bandaged it up, it is bruised, and very sore to touch, but not broken or twisted... while I was busy cursing at my stupidity at not looking where I was going, Kelly was looking very excited, I had taken 1.5 seconds off my first run. Very Nice. Only 20-40 hundredths of a second off a bunch of Americans and Canadian. Got to be happy with that. Just got to go faster tomorrow.

Kellys first run was real good, but she lost a lot of time in the top section in her second run. Liz hurt her hand during the first run and did not do the second (but should be all right tomorrow). Russ had a smoking second run and Ben an awesome first run after forgetting his helmet and running back in to find it seconds before he was due to start.

If your wondering why the guys tend to go faster, alot of it has to do with weight, a lot of the guys sleds are 10kg more than mine and then the guys are heavier too, when your on ice, the heavier you are, the faster you go (providing you don't hit too many walls ;-)

Times

Day one of training
Lou 62.33 and 62.80
Liz 61.24 and 62.91
Kelly 63.01 and 62.79
Ben 60.12 and 59.93
Russ 61.15 and 60.37

Day two of training

Russ 60.03 and 59.62
Ben 58.11 and 58.79
Kelly 61.48 and 61.94
Liz 61.23 and DNS
Lou 61.59 and 60.25

Sliding has been cancelled

It sucks when the officials can cancell paid training (training which is not part of the world cup, that we have to pay for and is arranged for us by the nation hosting the race). We were supposed to train this morning, 2 runs at $US18 per run, But the truck carrying a lot of the sleds from Calgary has not arrived in time, which is not a surprise because the same thing happened last year and we missed out on 2 days of training. All the Kiwis carried our own sleds with us on the flights so we have our sleds here but we still cant slide. But still it was worth going to the track because we had a huge snow ball fight instead.

It snowed all night and it is supposed to do it all week, which makes for a bit of a pot luck race. It should be interesting, we are going down to the track in an hour to do a track walk again and watch the womens bobsledders who are here for a world cup, there should be a lot of crashes, since Lake Placid is hard for bobsledders, it is more of a skeleton track.

Lake Placid is a beautiful place, and from the track you can see the Adirondak mountains and the lakes, it is really wonderful, a big change from Calagary which is in the city.

Well I'll let you know how sliding goes tomorrow.

Oh my God, we missed our flight...

I travel around the world a lot, in fact, I was clocking at least 8 flights a year when I was at primary school, and never ever did I miss a flight, but yesterday morning when Kelly and I arrived at the airport at 8am to check in the smiling chirpy check in staff told me my flight left ten minutes ago, I was speechless.

Kelly had told me the time we needed to be at the airport and arranged us a lift there, I should have checked my own itinerary, I always have in the past, but I didn't, and we missed our flight. AAAAHHHHH. So my seriously small budget that I am trying to spread over the whole season has not only diminished by the size of a new down jacket but also a one way air ticket to Montreal. The bonus was that we were not charged excess baggage for our sleds like a lot of other athletes.

We arrived in Montreal at 6pm last night, on the same flight as Liz and Peter (Dutch athlete who we spend a lot of time with). Since Kelly, Ben Russ and me are all under 25 it is very expensive for us to hire cars, so Kel, me and Stu (Scottish slider) are sharing a car with Peter as driver and Russ, Ben and Liz are sharing with Liz driving. Peter hasn't got a credit card so I booked the car with mine, but when we came to pick it up they were not too happy with having my credit card and Peter driving, we got around that one with Peter signing up as "Mr Corcoran" and eventually got on our way. It is a 3ish hour drive to Lake Placid.

Kelly and I have arranged to stay with Jim and Judy Shea, they are Jimmy Shea's parents, Jimmy won the Gold Medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake. They have a wonderful house in the woods just up the road from the lake and walking distance to town, and tonight Judy cooked us........MOOSE! It was delicious; we are having moose meat patties later on this week.

We went for a track walk today, the track looks very bumpy and rough, hopefully I dont add to my bruises. The temperature was -5 today but it is forecast to drop to about -25 this week so I am lucky I got my self a new down jacket, I am going to need it.

We slide at 9 tomorrow, I'll let you all know how it goes.