Today we got to sleep in, until 5 AM, then early breakfast and 6:30 AM upload. It was crucial to get a training run in to make sure the Olympic downhill could be run when it is supposed to be, on Feb 13. Pretty eery skiing in pitch dark, although there are portable bright lights installed along pathways we need to take, plus headlamps most of us have. Once again, last minute clean-up and security issues, inspection, and forerunners. Given fog rolling in and unpredictable weather (Welcome to Whistler), decision was made to run racres at 40 second intervals, really small interval with possible risk, but need to get race in before weather would cause another cancellation was primary factor in decision. Although a few fog delays did happen, all racres gotr to run the course, albeit only to a point about 20 seconds above finish, as women were also doing training run, finish line is common to both, and as I learned the portion of the course that must be skied to make the training run "official" is quite variale and can be determined by the jury (see yesterday's blog re: jury). Forty seconds leave s little to no time to repair gates, flags, ruts, etc. But I was working near Gunther (see previous day blog), the FIS referee, who was a wealth of knwoledeg, and expereince, in terms of how to do and not do things re: saferty and security. To remind you, length of downhill is about 3.1 km, winning time should be between 1 min 50 and 1 min 55 seconds, so average speed is over 90 km per hour. Nobody wants to get in way of a racer at that speed. Gunther was a constant reminder to everyone in our area abut the need to be careful and attentive all the time. Needless to say, race organizers were thrilled to get all racers through. Now no matter what, the downhill can take place Feb 13. And I hope most of you took the time to check the results and note that Canada finished 2d and 3rd, less than 15/100 of a second from gold (Yes I know it is just practice).
And tomorrow we do not have to be at AM meeting until 7 AM, so I get to stay up later tonight and write blogs!
View up the mountain from base of foot bridge at 6:15 AM. Try looking for powder in this light!
Most of work on race day is scraping loose snow off the skier's path. Between fresh snow and warm weather, there was lots, so we scrape it off to side in bigger piles, and then snowblow it off the track.
If you look carefully, you can see 3 people at top of tree. Except for the climb, they are more comfortable than we are, as they are in sling/harness with no weight on feet/legs. These were photographers, part ofthe $400,000,000 package purchased by VANOC for all the Olympic video and audio.
Late nights, very early mornings, and lots of hard work beginnning to take a bit of a toll on some, as seen in the lunch tent after the men's run.
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