Lucy Chaffer charts her first exciting weeks in the OWI/AIS skeleton program:
We arrived at the AIS on Tuesday October 31, eager to be taking the next step in this skeleton adventure. There were the six ‘newbies’ - Chelsea, Renee, Lisa, Teniele, Ami and myself - along with Melissa Hoar and Emma Lincon-Smith. The next three days were filled with different presentations from ASADA, nutrition, massage therapy, psychology to attending the athletes assembly where they recognize the achievements of each sport. It was exciting to see how prominently skeleton featured in the video package. In between these presentations we also had time to work on our push starts, 30m time trials and a physio screening where we all found out more about ourselves.
On Friday it was off to the airport for the long flight to Calgary. There was a lot of packing and re-packing our bags to get them under the 23kg weight limit, but finally after a short flight to Sydney and a few hours playing cards waiting for the flight to San Francisco, we were off. After a long and uneventful flight and a stop in San Francisco we were close to Calgary and our excitement grew as we could see the snow capped mountains. Landing in Calgary we were met by Duff Gibson who was working at the airport, then later by Terry Holland who took us to our hotel. It’s a nice hotel straight across from the Olympic Park and looking out from some of the rooms you can see the ski jumps. After dinner it was straight to bed for a much needed sleep in the most comfortable beds.
Day two in Calgary brought a trip to the Mall to buy boots and other essentials like bananas. That night we had our first run on the skeleton track, we were pushed off from the half way mark in between turns seven and eight. It was approached with a mix of excitement and apprehension as we did not really know what it would be like and if we would enjoy it or not. The ride was amazing like nothing I've ever experienced before and we all came off the ice with huge smiles on our faces wanting to go again.
The next night we padded up again to look like gridiron players and we were ready to go from the Women’s luge start, this is about 2 turns higher than last night. This time we were all excited wanting to go a little longer and a little faster than the night before, we weren’t disappointed, it was a great ride and we are now starting to recognize the turns and remember that we are suppose to be doing some steering.
Day four in Calgary we were all getting settled in to a routine for sleeping, it was off to the gym in the morning then we slid at 5pm today was the day we were going off the top. This brought a few nerves as we were told that there was going to be a very big difference from last night to today, fortunately for us the track was quite slow so no one fell off or flipped the sled and we have all got the Skeleton bug. This time we get to have two runs the second run we all thought a bit more about how we were suppose to steer in each turn and how to control the sled.
The past few days we have been in a routine we either have the gym or the ice house in the morning to practice our push starts, then back to the hotel for lunch and a video review of the previous day’s runs, going through what we have to work on for that day. Then in the afternoon we are sliding, concentrating on trying not to hit the walls and getting the best line down the track. We have improved a lot since the first day and can feel now when we go late into a turn and if we steer incorrectly. We are learning heaps every time we go down and through everything we do. It has been a great start to a big adventure and all of us are eager to learn the most we can and experience the sport of Skeleton to the full.
Lucy Chaffer
