paralympic blog, day -1

I’m on the Team USA bus from Vancouver Airport up to Whistler. Skies are gray and it’s cold and rainy outside, but spirits are high and someone has a DVD of Dumb & Dumber playing on the bus’s TVs. The Sea-To-Sky Highway provides some ridiculously dramatic views of B.C.’s coastal inlets, mountains, straits, fjords and whatnot before we turn inland and start climbing uphill.

The flight from Denver was easy enough — I even managed to finagle a seat in First — but loading and unloading 10 or 12 wheelies on one plane took a good while. (We traveled with the curling team.) As soon as we cleared passport control, Vancouver 2010 staff were waiting to issue us our athlete credentials. The credential is a laminated, hologrammed card as big as a DVD case that you have to wear around your neck for just about every waking moment at the Games. Security is generally as tight as you might expect for a big international event. Some people even wear their credentials underneath their race suits while competing, so as not to be caught without it if selected for doping control in the finish area. When we had our head shots taken for our credentials a month or two ago, we were told we couldn’t smile, so all of us look deadly serious in the photos.

Joe Tompkins has convinced the bus driver to stop at a roadside Subway, and everyone is chowing down on sandwiches. Soon we’ll arrive at the Whistler Paralympic Village and begin settling into our dorm rooms, learning our way around the place, getting dinner and inevitably convening for the first of many alpine team meetings. I don’t know yet who my roommate or roommates will be for the duration of the Games, but I do know it will be someone I’ve shared with before — I think I’ve probably roomed with every U.S. male disabled skier that’s skied a World Cup race in the last 10 years. Who I’m assigned could have a big effect on my mental state for the next 15 days.

whistler

Yesterday we wrapped up the World Cup Finals in Whistler, B.C. This was our test event for the Vancouver Paralympics next year; we were racing on the same hill we'll be on then. I'm writing from the Vancouver airport on the way back to Colorado and don't much feel like writing prose right now — kinda sleepy after a late night out with all the teams. So instead I'll write some bullet points to update you on the pertinent facts, and I'll keep going until I get sick of writing more or it's time to board our flight, whichever comes first. Ready? OK, let's do this:

• In yesterday's slalom, my U.S. teammate Gerald Hayden landed on his first World Cup podium, taking the bronze behind Suzuki (JPN) and Egle (AUT) and ahead of a lot of really, really good skiers. In the finish I gave him a fist bump and a "Booyakasha!"
  
• I seem to have caught a bad case of the DNFs lately. I didn't finish the downhill, GS or slalom. Despite that, I'm pretty happy with how I'm skiing and I think that when I do break out of this rut next season, I'll be racing on a higher level. I haven't trained as much this winter as usual because we've been so busy racing, and I think it's hurt me in the technical events.
  
• If you haven't seen them yet, the Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic mascots are AWESOME. Quatchi is a friendly sasquatch and Miga is an adorable little anime-ish bear or something, while the Paralympic mascot Sumi (who was in the finish area of our races most days) is a weird hybrid of a sea turtle, an eagle and a bear — kind of messed up but functional in his own little happy way, much like most of us Paralympic athletes.
  
• The Sea To Sky Highway, from Vancouver to Whistler, is breathtakingly cool and scenic.
  
• I did finish the super combined race, in 10th place (14th in the super G portion and 5th in the slalom — who would've guessed I'd be turning into a slalom specialist?). I managed to finish all three super-combis this season, meaning I finished in a respectable 8th place in the final standings in that discipline.
  
• The downhill course is truly badass. Like the Sestriere course from 2006, it has everything a disabled downhill should: speed, steeps, flats, a big banked turn, and even some air. This is probably the fastest course I've ever raced; I was clocked at 111 km/h (69 mph) during a training run, although in the race run I slid out before I got to the speed trap. Despite the DNF, it was valuable experience to run the Paralympic course three days in a row.