Double Gold in Konigssee and World Cup

For the last Europa Cup races before World Cup competition, my teammates and I were in Konigssee, Germany, the track where I raced my first World Championships on as a pilot.  I was excited to come back there, but early in the week I found myself facing a great deal of difficulty driving.  I was frustrated all week- just having a really tough time.  I went to one of my coaches, Mike Kohn, a former bronze medal push athlete who turned pilot- just like myself.  He explained to me that what I was going through was completely normal, that all pilots have a great deal of difficulty in their second season- because you feel like it should be easy- but it's just not.  I've been told this by others before, but I didn't think it would happen to me- but it was and continues to.  Coach Kohn though said something that I brought with me into the race- he told me to "just drive."  And that's exactly what I did- I went into the races- and just drove.  I didn't think about anything else- I just drove, and the outcome took care of itself- I walked away with two gold medals with brakeman Katie Eberling and Brittany Reinbolt.

Tomorrow is the first World Cup race of the season.  This past week has been very frustrating indeed, I've been under the weather, and my driving woes continue- very frustrating training runs and I definitely haven't been winning training as far as times go.  The frustrations continue, but all I can do is go into tomorrow's race and do the best I can.  So here we go...first World Cup of my sophomore season...

Silver and Bronze

The first two FIBT races of the season for me were in Igls, Austria- two Europa Cup races.  In bobsled, there are three circuits of racing, the America's Cup, the Europa Cup, and the World Cup.  Each circuit is very competitive, but World Cup is the highest level of all the circuits.  The Europa Cup is a very competitive circuit- as many of the pilots from World Cup compete on it to gain some extra points before the season starts and to get more runs on certain tracks.  For my teammate Jazmine Fenlator and I, we were competing in Igls to do just that- get more points and get more experience, as we are both very young in our careers as pilots.  

The first day of races, I won a bronze medal and was only .03 away from the gold- .03!  Such a crazy small margin, but I was happy with the result, as I had the fastest down time and push time the second run. Day 2, I finished in silver, but it was a less satisfying day.  Although I once again had the fastest push times with Katie Eberling, I was disappointed in my runs.  Despite the outcome of a medal, I still wanted to have better runs.

That's the way it goes sometimes though as a bobsled pilot, some days you can have great runs and end up lower in the rankings, other days you have horrible runs and end up moving up in the world- crazy how that works...but I'm learning- that's bobsled!