Konigssee and St. Moritz Update

WARINING: THIS E-MAIL IS VERY LONG!!

Good morning Everyone,

After seeing an e-mail update from a friend who informs people about her travels as a Christian Missionary I decided that I needed to make step my game when it comes to the format of my updates. The format you see before you is my test run of changing things up, so please let me know if you like it or not? Oh and my grammar, punctuation and such will still be unlike anything you ever learned in skool just because I think it’s funny at times. So sit back and enjoy another tale of intrigue and adventure of the chaos and travel that is my life! Lol

O.k so dese toos Guyes walk into a bar an da first guy sais to the second guy Hey you know what would be….! Sorry I did it again that’s the wrong story! I hate when I do that!

Konigssee, Germany

Konigssee Germany was the next top on tour, the name may sound familiar because we had a Europa Cup Race their earlier this year. Konigssee may also sound familiar since it is where World Championships were held last year. This year it would only have a regular World Cup Race but the Team Event was also scheduled to be held on this track! As of now the team event does not really count for any World Cup points but is more of a way to create excitement and unity between bobsled and Skeleton. The way it works is that each country selects a male and female sled from each discipline (Skeleton and 2-man Bobsled) to race as a team, with each discipline getting one run a piece. The firs sled to go off the top of the hill is chosen by a draw, after that initial sled all other sleds are chosen by down time. So for example if an American team draws first and their skeleton sled finishes with the fastest down time then in the next heat when the American Bobsled is scheduled to go off it would go off last in the order. As you can imagine there is a lot of jumping around in order depending on the finishes of your country’s previous slider! Its controlled chaos but it’s a fun event and we are hoping to get it into the Olympics one day!!

Unlike the last time we were in Konigssee we did not stay at the Hotel Brunneck, this time we stayed at the AlpenHotel Fischer which is our normal hotel. The AlpenHotel is a pretty nice place but the food service was not as fast as the Hotel Brunneck nor was its internet service as good either, however the room were larger which were a plus. The AlpenHotel also had a larger garage for directly underneath it where we were able to store all our bobsleds; making it easier to do sled work, practice 4-man loads and etc. To complete the ambiance that is the AlpenHotel it also had a great pool/spa/massage area that was perfect for relaxing in after long days of training.

I do not recall if I have mentioned it before or not but the Berchtesgaden/Konigssee, Germany Area is one of my favorite stops on the World Cup Tour http://en.berchtesgadener-land.com/en/live/ennavi/parser,id,75,nodeid,.html The Bobsled Track there is fun ride, it has a series of back to back curves that look like two sets of S’s turned on their side and it has a 360 degree turn that is exciting, full of pressure and speed! You know what I LIKE SPEED!! SPEEED IS GOOD! I WANT SOME MORE SPEED! The town is beautiful, there is a river that runs through it that has crystal clear water, it’s unlike anything I have seen. The Ramsauer Ache River sticks out in my head so much that when my teammate Adam and I were driving up from Altenberg the GPS had taken us a different way than I had remembered and I was started to second guess if we had gone to correct way; but after looking out the window and seeing the Ramsauer Ache I knew we were going the right way. The area is also full of historical sites from World War II, I definitely think it’s a place worth visiting.

Back on the bobsled front there is an Ice Push Track where we could do some additional Start training and testing. Being that we had the Push Track at our disposal and the Coaches were still trying to pinpoint why the USA 2 sled start times were not faster, they felt it was necessary to test the side pushing guys on USA 2 (myself and Johnny) against the two alternates (Adam and Dallas). The winners of this testing would be the team that racing in Konigssee and St. Moritz. Personally I don’t think me or Johnny was thrilled at the Ideal because we both felt that we had earned/deserved the spots we were, but hey we’re not the coaches and what they say goes. You know actually I was more pissed than anything actually and the night before I promised myself that every combination I’m involved in would be the fastest and I would erase any doubt about who JESSE BECKOM III is and my pedigree!

Since we were doing side push testing combinations we used the 4-Man push sled. The first combination was Johnny and I, the second combination was Adam and Dallas all following combinations would be some mixture of all of us i.e Johnny and Adam, Dallas and Johnny and etc. On the day of the race off the other guys wanted to warm-up inside the garage at the hotel then drive to the track. I on the other hand wanted to warm-up at the track, I grabbed the keys to one of our BMW’s and left by myself for the track. As I was driving to the track it began to rain adding to the already slippery conditions of the warm-up area at the track. It was at this time I started to doubt my decision to warm-up outside at the track!! Thoughts about having a poor warm-up began to pop in my mind……but then a smile came on my face. I remembered it was skeleton training day, the start area at the top of the track was covered providing me with a perfect area to warm-up WINNING! After an hour of preparations I was ready to rock so I drove down the hill to join my teammates at the Ice House. In order to get acclimated to the sled as well as test the timing eyes we all took a few practices pushes, after that it was game on. In order to keep the test as accurate as possible a load point was set for the first and second guy to ensure that people were not just pushing as far as they can. This is done because in an Ice House you’re able to run further than it would be possible on an actual bobsled track due to the impending first curve on a bobsled track. So adding load points limits an athlete’s ability to run it to the house as we say in order to obtain a faster time negating the fact of concerns about velocity and or load. As I mentioned the first combination out the gate was me on the left and Johnny on the right (our positions all year). Johnny and I step on the block, our coach clears the track, Napier calls the cadence, we hit the sled and BAM WE”RE PUSHING! As we are pushing my body is in the right position, I’m feeling powerful, smooth, relaxed and fast!! So Fast! As I am pushing I see the load point out the corner of my left eye and I hit the bunk (take my load step) perfectly and am up, over and down in the sled instantly! The bad thing about this is that right around the time I should have felt Johnny loading behind me I didn’t. I was focused on the approaching wire in front of me that slings the sled back up the push track and if I was not holding on tight I would flip over the front of the sled. After hitting the wire I looked back to Johnny being drug by the sled and as the sled began moving backwards he was on the verge of being run over!!! I immediately rushed to the back of the sled and reached out my hand to try and help Johnny up so he would not get crushed! At the same time Johnny was reaching our trying to grab hold of my arm somehow trying to wrap his leg around part of the sled to get from underneath it, it was tricky because I had to try and find some leverage so I would not fall out as well!! At the same time my other teammates were running down the outside of the ramp reaching in trying to grab the sled to stop it from going back!! I ended up with one foot in the sled one foot on the ice, a hand on Johnny pulling him up from by the front of his shirt while still holding on to the sled with my other hand and my teammates holding on to the sled as well!! I thank God for everyone responding so quickly because it could have ended really bad! As you can imagine Johnny was shaken up a bit but thankfully he had no major injuries besides a sore wrist. I received a nice deep cut on my wrist from being spiked by Johnny as I was reaching for him. I have to thank God again on this because if the cut was a little more to the right I would probably still be gushing blood! After about a ten minute break to make sure there were no serious injuries we were back into the competition which last another 50 minutes or so. Besides Johnny falling off the sled and almost dying in a tragic mutilated way it was a good day of pushing. Yeah my sense of humor is a bit dark at times but Johnny was fine so its ok to joke about it now. Lol Deal With it! My Blog My way Just playing but really I have issues! Lol Shhh….don’t tell anyone.

Here is the Ice House Video

A few hours after our competition the coaches sent out an e-mail of the results and I am pleased to say that I was on the fastest combination of the day and I was involved in the more fast combinations than anyone!! Unfortunately though the combinations Johnny were on were not among the fastest that day. At a meeting later that night the coaches brought us into a room and informed us that the new push crew racing this week would be me, Fogt, and Adam (Adam has the second amount of fast pushes and was on the fastest push of the day with me). It was a hard situation for everyone, since Johnny had been racing with us the entire time and now was off the sled. Especially when you take into consideration that Johnny had beaten Adam in a 2-man race off earlier in the season when we were in WInterberg, Germany. But it was the coaches decision and one we had to abide by.

Personally that week of training was frustrating because I knew that the constant testing of certain members of USA 2 was not going to end anytime soon. Which affects timing, riding position, team cohesion and overall team morale but what can you do. It was evident that the stress was getting to everyone and it manifested itself in our team’s decision go out and dance a bit the night before the race!! Yup we went out dancing and it was exactly what we needed to cut some of the tension that was forming among us. We did not stay out too late but it felt good to go out, relax a bit and listen to some good music. We were in Germany so…..I use the term good music very loosely….but still fun.

The 4-man Race went off as scheduled the next day at 9 am. In following with most of the season guessed who showed up just in time for the race? Yup Mr. Snow flake and his flurry of buddies! Lol Yeah that was a bad joke but I’m not taking it back. My warm-up before the race felt great it was probably one of the best warm-ups I had all year up to that point and ironically enough my teammates felt the same way…we were ready. After a few sleds had gone it was our turn we stepped on the block ready to do our thing. Napier called the cadence and the hit felt good but the load into the sled could have been a bit smoother but once again this is something that is fixed the more a team works together. However the push was better and relatively closer to USA 1 then we had all year. Our second load was better and our second push was even closer to USA 1 than the first one had been. We finished 13th in the race but the fact that he push was better gave us some hope and something to build on going into the St. Moritz races the next week.

St. Moritz, Switzerland

After we packed up the sleds it was time to hit the road for World Cup #6 in the beautiful area of St. Moritz, Switzerland the birthplace of Bobsleigh and Skeleton and host to the 1928 and 1948 Olympic Winter Games. The track in St. Moritz is by far the overall favorite track of athlete’s competing on World Cup! The track is the last remaining natural track in the world; it begins in the town of St. Moritz and ends in the town of Celerina. Its 1700 meters of the smoothest shaped ice in the world. This is probably the only track in the world where you really want to look up (but you can’t well not in a race that is) as you are going down because it winds through trees and a natural terrain.

The drive into St. Mortz is amazing as well although you drive up a ton of switch backs!! And I am not going to call Johnny out on his motion sickness thing but we did have to let him drive the switch back section so he did not get sick!! But other than telling you guys I will not tell anyone else that Johnny Quinn who played football at North Texas University gets motion sickness at times!! So please keep this between us. Thank you.

Going into the race week at St. Moritz we all thought the plan was set, well that was until we had a meeting Monday night. During the meeting the schedule announced that the training format for the week would be 2-Man Tuesday, and 4-man Wednesday and Thursday, Friday is a day off and off course we race Saturday and Sunday. But the catch was is that they wanted me to do one day of 4-man with my normal crew then on the second day they wanted to swap me out for Dallas (one of the Alternates) to take a trip with the USA 2 sled so they can compare numbers. Now what numbers they wanted to compare and what they wanted to use these numbers for only God knows but I was not happy. Because from my view point and other athletes it seemed very suspicious, especially since we had just done race-offs the week before in Konigssee. Once again I had a meeting with the coaches along with my athlete reps to figure out the reasoning behind this one and one scenario on the 4-man sled they wanted to have. The details of the meeting are not really important to detail here but in short they wanted to look at velocity and why the Napier seemed to be losing time down the hill. Regardless of the reasoning the schedule was set but some issues were expressed to the coaches from my perspective along with concerns from other athletes on the team.

I may have mentioned this a few times but this season was really trying for me to say the least, having to endure situations I could not imagine. But I continued to keep the faith and my counsel with God going which carried me through. The way things played out this season definitely made my favorite Bible verse, Romans 8:31 What then shall we say to such things? If God before us who can stand against us!?

On Tuesday the day of 2-man sliding Dallas was scheduled to slide with Napier. The day started of pretty normal, well until the forerunning (non-competitive sleds that are used to test the timing eyes down the track) sleds started to go. Now for the most part sleds that forerun are up and coming teams within the program hosting the World Cup Race. These teams train along National Team members and are just a little bit behind the National pace. There must have been something in the water because the forerunners were having issues with hitting the sled at the same time and getting into the sled! When the brakemen fell down on the forerunning sled all you heard was Ohhhhhhhh from everyone at the start. But to that brakemen’s credit after he slipped and fell he got up, ran down the sled and hopped in!!! Once he hopped in the Ohhhhh’s turned into cheers and applauding! After the forerunners had gone it was time for Team USA to take its runs. Usually Holcomb goes before Napier in the order but for some reason Napier was listed before Holcomb on this day. Me and the other guys not sliding moved the sled to the line for Napier and Dallas, flipped it down and brushed off the guys shoes. Napier and Dallas squat down into their start position ready to go. Napier calls the cadence and they both hit the sled!! But unfortunately as Dallas took his first step he slipped and fell while Napier was still pushing!! Dallas got up and started chasing after Napier and the sled but it was too late; the sled was too far ahead of him and there was no way Napier could have stopped the sled. Holcomb and Langton were up to push next and thankfully they had no issues, and to Dallas’s credit his next push was fine. With this turn of events it kind of put the kybosh on what the coaches had planned. Why is that you ask, well I will tell you. In bobsled as a precautionary measure there is a rule that a driver must have at least two successful trips per discipline before that week’s race. Since Napier’s first trip was a solo bob he now needed to do 2-man on Wednesday as well in order to be cleared to race in 2-man. Since another day of 2-man training was needed it cut the available 4-man days down to one making leaving no time for and experiment to gain additional data. The next day 2-man training went good without any issues and 4-man training went just as smooth. Our day off from training was pretty normal and no……we did not got out this week either! Lol However we did sand runners, adjust handles and clean the sled in preparations for our the 2-man race Saturday and the 4-man race Sunday.

On Saturday USA 1 (Steve Holcomb and Steve Langton) finished in 4th place, USA 2 (John Napier and Chris Fogt) finished in 16th place. After the race Fogt was feeling pretty down because his start times were below what he had hoped. We did our best to encourage him letting him know it’s a team effort, and that we have 4-man the next day where the pushes will be faster. I think it helped a little bit sometimes no matter what is said to a person they still have to work it out in their own minds. I am happy to say that Fogt being the athlete he is was able to shake it off or at least use that frustration as motivation for the 4-man push.

After a great night of sleep it was time to get our 4-Man Race on!!! It was a beautiful day in Zamunda (Coming to America Reference) I mean in St. Moritz, me and the boys were ready! Me and Adam were screaming Left Side!!! Strong Side!! Left Side!! Strong Side!!! (Remember the Titans Reference) in the locker room!!! Needless to say we were filling up for the occasion. We get to the block, our coaches drop the sled, we get into position and we are off!! The push and ride down the hill feel good but as we get to the bottom we find ourselves in 16th position; this is not good nor where we thought we would be. After talking to the coaches we find that the push was descent but Napier hit going into Curve 1 which killed our speeds up top, which multiplied down the track. This was not that bid of a surprise since the entrance to curve one was different in past year because now there was a Luge start built just to the right of the Bobsled start. Basically you have two different starts coming from different angles but both going into the same curve. This factor had been causing problems for every drivers all week and it was fifty/fifty when they got it right. Just like in football dwelling on the situation would not help but we had faith that Napier would correct his steer on the second heat.

Being that we were in 16th position and the second heat starts in reverse order from 20th-1 we would be off sooner than later. Now in general no team ever wants to be in that group of sleds going off first in the second heat because that means you are not in the top ten. This is even more true in St. Moritz, being that it is a natural track the ice conditions are directly related to the weather. As morning turns into early afternoon the sun continues to rise making the track faster each minute that passes giving sleds who are off later in the order a natural advantage. But we were 5th off the top of the hill, all we could do is push our hardest get low and hope for the best at the bottom and that’s what we did!! We had had a good push, Napier had a better entrance into curve one and better trip overall. After having the 16th fastest down time in the first heat our second trip was the 9th fastest down time and we had better velocity then USA 1!! We were living in the Winner’s Box at the bottom, beating four sleds that were in front of us after the first heat but the sled in 11th position was too far ahead of us for us to catch them. We ended up in 12th position about .20 out of the top ten. USA 1 finished in 4th tied with Russia 1.

Being in the Winner’s Box for so long felt Great, especially since it would be our last World Cup Race until World Championships in Lake Placid. There were two World Cup Races left one in Whistler and Calgary Canada but USA 1 and USA 2 would not be competing in them. Why would we skip these races you ask?.....well because World Championships is in Lake Placid and skipping the last two races gives us more time to prepare for worlds. This is also why we did the Europa Cup races early in the season because those points can partially replace a World Cup Race. And if you have been keeping up with the races on www.fibt.com you know that the plane worked!!.....But I will recap the events that happened during Worlds in my next update, along with the craziest race-off scenario and racing events I have experienced!!!

Please go to www.jessebeckom3.com to view all the pictures from the second half of the season. Click on the Media Tab then select 2011-2012 Bobsled Season Second Half Pictures.

Thank you all for being so patient in awaiting my updates

God Bless

Jesse

www.jessebeckom3.com

www.jessebeckom.blogspot.com