One more shot!

One more shot

Today was an exciting day for me. Since I have been feeling much stronger I was able to get out and cheer some of my best friends on the USA Nordic Combined Team. They skied an amazing racing and earned four shiny silver Olympic medals. Congrats to Brett Camerota, Todd Lodwick, Johnny Spillane and Bill Demong and their coaching staff. This is the first Olympic medal in a Nordic Combined team event for the USA. Their success shows that it is possible to win in a European dominated sport.

We’ve now started training on the large hill ski jump for the final Olympic Nordic Combined event coming up Thursday February 25^th. Jumping continues to be a challenge as I struggle to find my previous form. I seem to be landing around 105 meters no matter the jump I make which is frustrating. However, I still have one session to turn things around a bit. Of course, things will be different on competition day as there will definitely be more energy in the air and I’m excited to have another chance to milk that energy.

Since my first event I was named the loneliest Olympian in the media. In some ways this may be true. I definitely feel that way at times in the Athlete Village now that most of the Canadian athletes are finished competing. I spend most of the day out at the Whistler Olympic Park venue to return to a mostly abandoned village as all of the luge and skeleton athletes, ski jumpers, and some of the biathletes have wrapped up their Olympic Competition and are now enjoyed the other elements of the Olympic Games.

Despite this perceived loneliness as a “one man team,” it is an amazing experience to have so many members of the Calgary, Thunder Bay, and various other Nordic Communities around the venues. In addition, I’m fortunate to be able to have teammates Barrett Martineau and Wes Savill around to use as gophers to help me push my cross skiing to the next level during intensity workouts. All of my teammates have been devoting long days to the forerunning the ski jumping so they are really working hard to be a part of the Olympics and keep up with their training at the same time. Hopefully they will get the chance to compete at the 2014 or 2018 Olympics.

Although I am a “one man team” there is just so much to do around the Olympic village on my own or as part of the Canadian Olympic Team. From free arcades to free dentistry work to road hockey matches versus the Canadian army, it’s easy to entertain oneself. Last weeks extracurricular activities were highlighted by social time with Queen Latifa, ping pong with Sidney Crosby, and, of course, watching John Montgomery’s gold medal skeleton race. At this point its all about balance. Its tough to be one of the last guys to compete as there are so many potential distractions, but yet it’s important to

So with only a couple of days remaining before my final event at the 2010 Olympics I’m excited to feed off of the extraordinary energy of the best Olympic Team Canada has ever fielded, the thousands of fans, volunteers, my teammates, friends, and most importantly my family. I’m excited to share this dream with all of them in pursuit of Olympic excellence.

Finally, I ‘d like to give a big thanks to all of the people that have sent me such supportive emails and fb messages. I value and appreciate each one of your messages and they will definitely help fuel my fire during the final race. Cheers.