Hello everyone,
I am currently in Cesana, Italy the last stop on the World Cup tour before World Championships!! The last two weeks have been up and down.
In order to find the fastest pushing combinations on USA 2 we had been changing positions and people on our four-man crew. Two weeks ago in Winterberg, Germany we came up with a pretty good combination resulting in my team mates Collin, and Laszlo on the side with me on the brakes (back of the sled) we pushed relatively faster together than the combinations before and ended up finishing 11th in the race, so close to a top ten finish.
Now while World Cup is going on Junior World Championships is also about to begin this week in Park City Utah. The athletes eligible for Junior Worlds must be 16 to 26yrs of age. Besides Napier my driver there is a new driver named nick who started driving last year who meets this age requirement, along with Laszlo and Collin as brakemen. In order to see who would have the choice of going to race Junior Worlds or not Collin and Laszlo had a race-off which Laszlo won. After conversations among the coaches it was decided that Collin would go back to the States and race Junior Worlds with Nick. Colin was also sent back because this was his first experience being away from home and after Junior Worlds he voiced that he had no intentions on continuing with the sport at this time.
This turn of events lead to the combination of Jared and Laszlo on the side with me on the brakes going into the St. Moritz Switzerland race the following week. The Track at St. Moritz is by far every bobsledders favorite track and the coolest! It is the last remaining naturally man made track in the World!! It is where bobsledding was invented, it is over a mile long, passes through two nearby cities, winds through a forest, and we hit speeds up to 91 mph! The track is made from the existing snow in the area and if there is not enough snow they truck it down from the Alps. The track is so smooth and long and our Bodies sleds hum when they get up to speed, it’s a beautiful thing! I have a ton of pictures on my web site www.jessebeckom3.com of Winterberg, Germany and St. Moritz just look for the folders marked by each city’s perspective name. However it takes a while for me to upload pictures to my site and the hotel we are staying us charges us hourly to use the internet so I will not be able to post pictures till Tuesday. But take my word for it these places are beautiful!
Four-man Training went well on Thursday, we were about .04 off the push of USA 1 on both practice runs, and we were all feeling pretty good going into the race. That Friday like every week we took off to rest and prepare the 2-man sled for the 2-man race Saturday. The two man race on Saturday was at 9 a.m. so we had breakfast at 6:45 and headed to the track at 7. The race seemed to be going smoothly my team mates Napier and Lazlo pushed and came down the hill. As I helping with the sled at the bottom Laszlo had a weird look on his face, then explained that he felt his hamstring pull on his last step getting into the sled. At that point several thoughts rushed through my head, I felt bad for Laszlo but I knew I had to get my mind in race mode because I would have to take the next run. While thinking about getting back to the top of the hill as quick as possible I began thinking what are we going to do for 4-man now! I quickly regrouped my thoughts taking them off of 4-man and placing them on the moment at hand. I usually take an hour to warm up, but today I only had about 25 minutes!! One of my team mates asked me if I would have enough time, I told him It will have to be enough today! This is the moment where in my warm-up I start praying several prayers to God asking him to heat my muscles up quicker so I don’t pull anything. Immediately during the warm-up my heart race started to increase, my adrenaline was starting to flow I had to remind myself this is not my first rodeo, and calm down before I got going too soon. I gathered my thoughts focused on what I had to do and did it. We ended up pushing 4 hundredths faster than they had pushed in the first heat. Under the circumstances I was ok of the push and I know if I had be just 1 hundredth slower than their first push time they would have tried to hold it against me regardless of the circumstances. We ended up finishing 15th but on the run I went down on we our down time was in 12th position so overall it was a pretty solid performance.
Then next day since Laszlo was unable to race we went with the alternate Johnny Q for the race (the alternate has changed every week it’s been crazy). This is not the ideal situation since our alternate had never done a World Cup race nor had we spent anytime practicing together but hey we made lemonade. The night before the race we made internal modifications to the sled, adjusting foot pegs and handles for Johnny Q, and then did about 15 loads in the sled to get ready for the race in the morning. During the race we did not have our smoothest loads or fastest pushes and ended up in 16th place. It was not the best situation for Johnny Q to be thrown in but I give him a lot of credit for stepping in and giving it his all when his number was called. Sorry I do not have any amusing tid bits in this e-mail but like I have said before I will do my best to tell stories the way I experience them and all the changing up over the last few weeks does not make for fun or productive bobsledding.
The good news is that our trainer Peter has been doing a ton of rehab with Laszlo’s hamstring and it seems to be better, so this week he will be able to do 4-man with us! Wish us luck.
God Bless you all.
Jesse
No comments:
Post a Comment