Olympic Trials-The Journey Begins

Olympic hopefuls operate on “quadrennium time.” Their mental calendars have exactly four years of pages. And although we’ve only been seeing their faces and the Olympic ads on TV for the last couple of weeks, they’ve been aiming towards the London Olympics since the closing ceremonies in Beijing. Planning, preparing, training. Most of us have no concept of the amount of work it takes to be an Olympic athlete. But we know it’s off the charts. In these next couple weeks, that hard work will pay off for a group of fortunate athletes; they’ll realize their dreams at their Olympic Trials.

So how do the Olympic Trials work? It can be rather confusing, as every sport has its own qualifying procedure.

Not all sports have a single Trials event. Some of the athletes are chosen as a result of several events/races (mountain biking) and some are chosen by an International ranking and a nomination committee (tennis). Others are chose from the National team by the National coach as a result of the athlete’s performances internationally (water polo, volleyball, soccer). Track and swimming are decided solely at one single competition, and the stopwatch makes the decision.

So, for us trying to find out how all of this works became a major project!

Twenty two months ago we began researching how their Trials were structured and when and where all of the competitions might be. Some NGB’s (each sports National Governing Body) were on the ball and had info up on their websites. One sport just posted the info a week ago. (No I won’t rat them out, but REALY?!) Phone calls to the national offices didn’t often provide us with any better information. It’s the Olympic Trials, how could they not have it organized??

I started following the sports we might want to see on Facebook and Twitter, which both turned out to be my best sources of information. Long time friend and USOC employee Sherry VonRiesen put us on her official Olympic Training Center email list so we received info on events there. Taekwondo, women’s water polo team, men’s gymnastics Trials qualifier and archery were all in Colorado Springs. A major bonus to have these so close to home!

Wrestling was going to be in Iowa City in April, an easy road trip and friends to stay with. The men’s Volleyball scheduled their Olympic Qualifier in Long Beach in May. An inexpensive plane trip. And then luck was really on our side. We found out Diving, trampoline, track and field and gymnastics were all on the west coast (Seattle, Eugene, San Jose) on consecutive weekends in June. So nine official Trials, one qualifier, one Olympic Team game and we had our Olympic Trials Adventure set! Our only disappointment was not being able to get to swimming.Their Trials are in Omaha at the same time we’ll be at Track and Gymnastics. Bummed not to be seeing Michael Phelps, Colorado swimmer Missy Franklin and client Kara Lynn Joyce.

So, the original plan was to take our pop up trailer on the coast trip. But after figuring out we’d be putting it up and taking it down at least 20 times during the drive (at an hour a set up/take down), Jim came up with plan B. Find a small camper to go on the back of his truck. Months of diligent searching Craig’s list and he found one in Cheyenne. It pops up in about 5 minutes. We nicknamed it “The Podium.”

The Podium is, how shall I say it…very compact! No wasted space. We’re about to have three and a half weeks of living in about 35 square feet!  We’ve never been RV campground kind of people, but I guess we’ll be getting a taste of the RV world. I’ll keep you posted on how that’s working out!

So the adventure begins, both for us and those amazing athletes. In very different ways, but adventures none the less. As the USA Olympic saying goes, AMAZING AWAITS!

In Celebraton of Sport!