Walt did a pair of important time trials at Soldier Hollow on Monday and Wednesday. These were used to determine the skiers who'd be attending the early season World Cup races with the National Team - a nice head start to the qualifying process. Every Olympic hopeful was there (minus two National team guys with nothing at stake), and all but two skiers raced on matched rollerskis, so theoretically everyone was on equal footing. Monday's 10k sprint was a mess - for whatever reason, Walt just didn't have it. Wednesday's 20k was a different story. Walt finished 3rd overall and posted the 2nd fastest ski time of those on matched skis, with only Tim Burke skiing faster - this in spite of a wrong turn that cost him about 20 seconds (what's up with that, anyway?). This is very encouraging. Walt has always relied on his shooting to keep him in contention, but this race showed that he can ski with any of the other guys on the Olympic bubble - there are a lot of fast guys in this group, so beating them is quite an achievement.
The qualifying scene is pretty quiet for the next few weeks until a series of December races in Minnesota. These events will be used to choose 4 athletes to join the 5 who'll already be competing on the World Cup - from this group of 9, the 5 Olympians will be chosen after some January World Cups in Germany. We'll keep you posted.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment