First I will apologize. This post is long overdue. Next, I will be honest. I've had a hard time coming up with right words to explain the events of the last couple weeks.
Our Olympic trials ended a little prematurely in Altenberg. We were suppose to have three races. Everyone's best two of the three races would be scored and the top three women and top two men of the group would be named to the Olympic team. After the first two races I wasn't overjoyed with where I stood but I knew I had one more big, four stage race to perform to show myself, and everyone else, what I was made of and put myself on that Olympic team. For reasons I will never know, this was not meant to be.
Sunday's weather was looking like it had all week in Altenberg; overcast, snowing lightly and foggy. It wasn't until we reached the range that we realized just how foggy it really was. And after delaying the race for a short while, we all started to zero. The fog was so thick, at times, that it forced the coaches to move their scopes up to the firing line in order to see the zero shots on paper. In the end they had to cancel the race. Visibility was bad enough to turn shooting into a guessing game.
We all went back to our hotel disappointed that we weren't able to compete in one of the most important races of our careers. From what I observed, the general assumption amongst the six of us girls competing, was that we would have a time trial the following day in order to finish out the qualifying process. A time trial wasn't ideal, it's never quite the same as an international competition, but it would have to do, or so I thought.
Our team meeting at 7:30pm Sunday night informed us that the ICC committee decided against holding another competition and took the results from the first two races to decide the Olympic team.
I am not trying to hide my disappointment in this decision. I am obivously very disappointed by it. I can't say that things would have turned out any different had we had the race but now no one will ever know if they could have. It is left unfinished. An incredible amount of time, planning, pain and hard work was put into training for these races, by all the athletes. I think we all deserve the trials that were planned.
What is done is done and it is time to move on. I would like to wish all of the athletes on named to the 2010 U.S. Olympic biathlon team the best of luck.
Now to figure out what my next step is; I am planning on jumping in a few of the Super Tour Nordic races in the Midwest to start. I am looking forward to a little change of pace and am very happy to be still racing. I do love it.
Many more adventure and posts ahead...stay tuned,
BethAnn
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