Got my face in world cup biathlon news!

What a surprise. Just got home from 3 days of watching world cup
biathlon in Lake Placid. Looked on the web to see how the event was
covered and I find myself looking at my 3-year-old son, Nathan, and
myself!

http://www.biathlonworld.com

[If you look at this a few days from now you may have to scroll down to
29.02.2004.]


The long version:

Friday:

Hit the road at 4:45 AM to get there in time for Friday morning's races.
Had to burn an hour at McDonald's Play Place in Glens Falls in order to
keep the kids under control. Warning: the breakfast there is worse than
normal (even for McD's) and the bathrooms do not have diaper changing
tables. :-(

Arrived just in time for women's race finish. After watching the Lake
Placid middle school flag twirlers and band perform we visited the
I(heart)NY family fun zone while waiting for men's race to start. They
went to a great amount of effort to include some spectator participation
stuff to keep kids interested. It was really great for the older kids
but nothing age-appropriate for a pair of 3-year-olds. We got out their
LL Bean skis and they puttered around a bit on those and had some fun.

Men's race was 10k interval start. Announcers tried hard but it was
difficult to keep track of the action. Electronic score board was too
narrow to include athletes' country abbreviations, so it was just a
jumble of names and times.

Afterwards we grabbed some lunch and visited the hotel pool. Nathan
screamed and threw a tantrum when we announced it was time to leave the
pool. He _always_ does this. We had planned to get in some skiing but
were more or less exhausted from the early drive and when the kids
konked out and slept half the afternoon away we just relaxed in the room
instead.

After dinner at HoJo's we were driving back to the hotel when we noticed
a fireworks show in progress out on the lake. Huh, wonder what that's
all about? Turned down a sidestreet and parked right by the lake to
watch. That's what I love about this town. There's always more going on
than you ever expect! Turned to tell the kids in the back seat to "look
over there" to make sure they weren't missing it. Surprise, they're
sound asleep. Oh well. We got to enjoy something together in peace for
once!

Saturday:

Got started in time to paint the kids faces today. Hannah wore the
stars and Nathan wore the stripes. We're pretty certain this is the day
the photo was taken. (I saw several photographers around but never saw
one of them snap us.) It was warm and I had Nathan on my shoulders a
lot today. His stripes wore off pretty quickly unfortunately, so don't
show up in the picture.

The race today was the women's 10k pursuit, based on Friday's finish
times. A fantastic race to watch. Head to head racing, close
competition, lead changed hands several times between start and finish.
American Rachel Steer had an incredible race, shooting clean all four
times through the range! She had a tough time matching the skiing speed
of the Euros in the main pack but she hung tough and finished still in
contact with them.

My one gripe about the biathlon stadium is the building by the
start/finish lines. After trying several viewing spots I discovered
there is NO PLACE where one can stand and see skiers enter and exit the
stadium, shoot, and ski their penalty loops. No matter where you stand
this building blocks your view of something! It's fun to watch the
shooting but it's also fun to watch the racers ski a bit, which is
easiest seen on the penalty loop and the straightaway just in front of
it. But you just can't watch both. Frustrating. If they want to
attract bigger crowds, this would be one thing to look at fixing.

After the race we got in a couple hours skiing the Mt. VanH trails while
the kids slept in the pulks. It was a warm day and kick waxing was a
real challenge. I started with Swix violet but that produced nothing but
great glide. After scratching my head at that result I decided to be
creative and pulled out the SkiGo silver. This is the one Brian May
was talking about earlier this year (aka Haggemans). With a couple thin
coats it gave me some kick but not enough for dragging a pulk up the
hills. If some is good, more is better (right?), so I glopped a bunch
more on. Great. Mule kick now but it killed my glide.

While this is happening the kids are swinging ski poles at each other
while my wife ran back to the car for something we forgot. Just then
Bob Maswick comes by and introduces himself. What a sight we must have
looked like! Me, 2 kids, 2 pulks, and 4 skis to wax. :-) Finally we
got started and managed to ski the east mountain loop and the ladies 5k
loop while the kids slept. Between shaded and sunny areas the snow was
very variable.

Put the kids on their skis when we got back and they had a ball
puttering around in set tracks for the first time ever. This was the
most skiing they had ever done in one day and they made some real
progress! Never saw John Tomlinson. Maybe his cold got the better of
him and he didn't make it?

Finally we packed it in, grabbed a bite to eat and hit the hotel pool
for a while. After dinner we got out the ice skates and took a couple
laps on the speed skating oval. The kids have been skating several
times this winter and are making good progress here, too. Fun to see
them improve a bit each time out!

Sunday:

Today was the men's 12.5k pursuit. Again a very exciting race to watch
with the head-to-head competition and close times. There were about 4
guys out ahead of the main field and then came the field itself, which
was BIG. On the penalty loop side of the stadium people seemed to be
getting away with watching right from the edge of the track today, so
we moved up there. Much more interesting than being held behind a fence
20 meters from the skiers.

The fun zone finally added some stuff for the little kiddies today! We
got there before the race in time to get a ride in a horse-drawn sleigh
and then put the kids in an air-filled-trampoline room for a while. Great
additions! Thank you! Wish they were there the previous 2 days. The
crowd was much bigger today than Fri or Sat, too. Not sure why.

Fun weekend, great weather, great skiing, kept the kids so busy they
never had time for toys. And then we find our picture in the news.
This is fun!

-Mitch

(Mitch Collinsworth) wrote in message mr.cornell.edu...

Looked on the web to see how the event was
covered and I find myself looking at my 3-year-old son, Nathan, and
Just then Bob Maswick comes by and introduces himself.
progress! Never saw John Tomlinson.
Fun weekend, great weather, great skiing, kept the kids so busy they
never had time for toys. And then we find our picture in the news.

Mitch -

I'm glad to see your kids did not poke each other's eyes out! You
forgot to tell everyone that Nathan won one of the raffle prizes!
BTW, John T. wuz there & I finally got to meet him too!

- Bob

On Mon, 1 Mar 2004, Bob Maswick wrote:

I'm glad to see your kids did not poke each other's eyes out! You
forgot to tell everyone that Nathan won one of the raffle prizes!

He did? Oh. We didn't hear that, so whatever it was we didn't get
it. If it's a college scholarship or a condo at the foot of Mt. VanH
we'll hop back in the car and drive right back up there! :-)


BTW, John T. wuz there & I finally got to meet him too!

So I see from his message last night. I kept looking for him but our
paths must have never crossed. I had a bit of a chuckle at the Euro
press dissing us for such a small crowd. I thought it was a pretty
good showing for such a remote location this late in the season. It
was a bit light on Friday but picked up on Saturday and even more on
Sunday. Comparing it against the world champs wasn't quite fair,
either. Had this been the world champs I guarantee the crowd would
have been bigger. If nothing else, more Euro teams would have shown
up and all the Euro teams would have brought more fans along.

Oh, one other thing I forgot to mention. The Lake Placid high school
band played after the men's race on Friday and our kids really enjoyed
that. When the band finished we tried to leave and Hannah started
hollering "No! I want to listen to the band some more!"

-Mitch

So I see from his message last night.
I kept looking for him but our
paths must have never crossed. I had a bit
of a chuckle at the Euro
press dissing us for such a small crowd. I
thought it was a pretty
good showing for such a remote location this
late in the season.

Thanks for the link to the biathlon world website. Hopefully with
judicious film editing the crowds will look OK on TV. I'm just
starting to look at the video Janne Granstrom has on his site; we'll
see about that.

My wife was until recently a Chinse citizen. I was trying to get her
to bring a Chinese flag to Placid, but she wasn't into it...until she
got there and saw a bunch of other countries' flags. Then she got
patriotic. (Her good deed for the weekend was helping one of the
Chinese athletes cut ahead of the spectators in line for a toilet at
9:57 on Saturday...) If they can get the World Cup back there in a few
years there will be at least one big Chinese flag. Let's hope Fort
Kent does a good job too.

JT