Woke up this morning and realized that a week from today I will be in Beijing, China living in the Olympic Village! I’ve waited so long for this moment to come and now it’s almost here! The last few weeks have been such a roller coaster of emotions and a flurry of preparations. Our team has been practicing hard and our Olympic training camp which has included a lot of the top younger fencers in our country is concluding on Wednesday. The amount of media attention has also been tremendous. Last week we were in a New York newspaper or publication everyday of the week! Pretty unprecedented for fencing even in an Olympic year! Hopefully this will translate into a ton of new people watching and trying out the sport. I keep watching Olympic commercials on television and each time I’m ready to jump off my couch and start fencing!
So, what other stuff do we think about? I don’t know if this is just me, but I keep having vivid dreams every night many of them centered on the Olympics. In one of them, I am running late to get to the airport to fly to the Olympics and then when I arrive at the airport I don’t know what airline I’m on! Scary! On the real scary front, I have had a bit of a pulled hamstring so I have been doing rehab and practicing lightly. I should be 100% by the time I need to compete, but the thought of injury at this point is always a scary one! I read a couple of stories about injured athletes who aren’t able to compete and I can’t imagine anything more devastating after working so hard for so long.
This past Saturday, many of my friends through me a great Birthday Party/Olympic send-off and I wanted to thank them for such a great night! I hope I can do you all proud! I’ll be taking lots of pictures and will try my best to provide you with the “Insiders View” of things. We will be leaving on a 7am flight on Friday and we’ll first be heading to San Jose State University in California for Team Processing. Every Olympian goes there first and it’s where we get our official team apparel, Olympic ring, the all important Olympic credential and more. 10 MORE DAYS!!! AMAZING AWAITS!
Recent Print and Video:
www.treasurehd.com (Television Show titled, “How the Best is Done: Elite Athletes,” gives viewers an inside look at the training regimes of world-class athletes. It aired last Friday, July 25th on treasurhd and you can catch it on the internet now. I have a 3 minute segment on the show that runs from 9:43 to 12:54
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/sports/olympics/23fencing.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin. (Good Story and GREAT Video)
http://www.amny.com/news/local/am-fencing0725,0,4147091.story (Good story and video)
http://www.riverdalepress.com/full.php?sid=5317¤t_edition=2008-07-24 (Nice article in a local newspaper)
http://www.nysun.com/arts/elite-athl…he-rest/82610/ (Good Article)
Coming Up: Aug 9 on NBC at 7pm “My First Time: Competing at the Olympics” I will have a large segment following my preparations for Beijing as well as my life outside of training at Teach For America.
