Youth Olympics, Lillehammer, Norway

First things first, here's the link to the sick video Claire Waichler made from Romania.


The Youth Olympic Games were quite possibly the best week of my life (so far at least).  For me, they were more than just some races in Europe.  I remember watching the London 2012 Olympics 4 years ago and thinking to myself, wow, I really want to do that.  By 2012 I had started skiing, but was not very fast yet.  If you didn't know, I was not a talented athlete when I was younger, and had no real hope of ever becoming an athlete, although I loved the idea of it.  Watching those games both sparked my dream of competing but also placed a lot of doubts in my mind: am I strong enough?  Do I have the mental toughness? What if I try and fail?  That ski season, I just barely made the Midwest Junior National team, and erased a little bit of the doubt. With the Games as my motivation, pushing myself to be better was easy, but I'm still not the best I can be.  That's the beautiful thing about skiing though, there is always progress to be made, and I can always get better.  I have no idea what the next few years will hold, but I'm so happy I had the opportunity to race at the Youth Olympics. 

Here's a bunch of pictures from the trip since I need to dedicate the thousand words to my homework...

The Races:
I got to race three times in Lillehammer.  The first race was the 6K sprint.  I missed 1 each in prone and standing, and felt like I was skiing fast.  During my last lap, I was in 5th place, which fired me up to ski one of the fastest 2K laps I think I have ever skied  (I started bib 20, so there were still a fair number of people behind me).  Having a bunch of Norwegians cheering on course "Go America Go!" helped too.   I finished in 10th!!!

 

Photo: Lillehammer2016

The 7.5K pursuit did not go quite as well.  I missed 3, 2, 1, 2, which was disappointing, but it was hard to be sad for too long about a bad race at such an amazing event.   Chloe had an INCREDIBLE day, and did America proud with her 4th place with clean shooting: 20/20 shots. 

   

Our last race was by far the most fun I've had racing in awhile.  The mixed relay was 2 girls (skiing 6K sprint races) followed by the boys (7.5K).  Chloe shot well and was in 2nd place for awhile.  I got the hand off in 7th, and skied up to 6th by the first shooting.  I only know the place because I remember skiing into the range and getting directed to point 6 thinking to myself, "woah, we are in 6th place at the Youth Olympic Games."  I used one relay to clean.  Coming into the range for standing I had moved into 4th place, and I had to force myself to take an extra breath and calm down.  I used 2 relay rounds for that stage, but still left the range in 3rd.  Vasek and Eli both skied fast, and we finished in 7th place. 

You can view results here.

 The Experience: 
 

My distance ski on the real Birkebeiner ski trails.  If you don't know the story of the Birke, you can read it here. Or if you want a little more detail here.

 The range and some good spelling.

The line of flags from the 70 nations at the Games.  We walked through this path on the way to and from every meal.  We also had to go through security every time we left the village, so for every meal and training session.

 

Athlete housing. 

 I took my off day to drive to Oslo with my family to

 see some sights, including this gnome.

And this cool ship outside the opera house...

...and an interesting sculpture garden.

A statue representing the Birke story in downtown Lillehammer.

A church in Oslo and the Olympic flame in Sjogg park. 

 Downtown Lillehammer all decked out in YOG stuff.  

Photo: Lillehammer2016

The People:

My sister, Jess, and aunts Sara and Ashley came to cheer me on. 

I went to cheer for the cross country skiers Hannah and Hunter, and these little kids took a break from their skiing to watch me and the other Americans with our flag. 

Vasek watching a man make skis in downtown Lillehammer. 

The skiers and biathletes meeting an Olympic hockey player (plus a Swede photobombing).

The boys making friends with their Yoggers, and Nikita, a slope style athlete and I, after the hockey game. 

One of the many many highlights of the week was that the boys won Gold in ice hockey! Congrats to them, and all the other athletes winning medals!

Lastly, congrats to my roommates Caiti and Cora on their silver medal in curling (and thanks to teaching me so much about the sport!)

Youth Olympic Games, Lillehammer 2016