Saturday, October 8, 2011

The 2011 Tale

Training before Worlds in Bratislava....
Croatian blue....
Competing in Worlds....
Homecoming my senior year....
Pulling through the gates at National Championships 2011....
Happy to be on the podium....
The season of 2011 was a mind-blowing experience. I found myself traveling all over Europe for a solid three months – the longest I’ve ever been away from home on my own – and I learned a great deal about myself and the world. After my first month of training in France, I traveled across Belgium and Germany with my coach, Pierrick Gosselin, to Prague, CZ, where the fourth World Cup was held. I trained hard in the week leading up to the race, and felt good about my chances. Once I got the actual race, however, things did not go precisely as I had anticipated. The day of qualifications was rough, with me barely slipping into semifinals. My semifinal run was even more of a disappointment to me. My speed wasn’t up to par, and a final disheartening blow was dealt to me when I passed through boat inspection following my run and discovered that I would be disqualified due to an underweight boat. Not exactly how I’d hoped the race would unfold, but it happened and I learned from it. With such a bitter pill behind me, I moved into training for Worlds with fervor. For the First several weeks of training, I lived and paddled with the U.S. team at the incredible course in Bratislava, Slovakia. The Danube River is the second longest river in Europe, and at one point along its meandering journey, is passes through a dam just south of Slovakia’s capitol. In the center of the dam is a chute which channels enormous amounts of water through the man-made whitewater channel residing on an island in the middle of the river. The channel moves swiftly, pouring down its gradient at incredible speeds, plummeting over a grandiose 16-foot-drop, and undulating in fabulous waves. Training was intense with two-a-days most every day, and I wore myself out, but splashing through such water was addicting. The days passed, and my friendships with the U.S. team members grew deeper (as did the life-jacket tan-lines), and I became more and more competent on the course. After long moths of separation, my parents showed up in Slovakia! I was overjoyed to see them…although it’s admittedly every seventeen-year-olds dream to go off on adventures all by themselves, I realized in my time away just how much I love being around my parents, who happen to be some of my closest friends. I trained for several more days after their arrival before we decided to take a short family vacation in Croatia. This turned out to be well timed, for in my last training session before we left I had a minor drama involving me flipping over above a shallow pour-over and smashing my forearm against a rock…thankfully it ended up being a deep bone bruise rather than a fracture, but our time in Croatia gave me a little time to recover before Worlds. Croatia, by the way, is HANDS DOWN, the most stunning country in the World. I won’t go into too many details, but to sum it up, this small country is a narrow strip running along the azure Adriatic Coast, with Mediterranean terrain, rocky coves, olive trees, raw, beautiful mountains, and, a ways away from the coast, a host of thermal towns, and national parks with brilliant turquoise lakes and waterfalls. Just think, that was without the details! After our short gypsy-jaunt, my parents and I returned to Bratislava for my final week and a half of training before World Championships. Upon my arrival, I re-joined the international training team (with 18 athletes from North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa partaking), and enjoyed my time preparing for the competition physically and mentally while surrounded by such enjoyable, cultural company. Finally the race arrived, rang in by a fabulous opening ceremony involving flags, speeches, rock bands, opera artists, cultural dances, live DJs, the best hip-hopping group in eastern Europe, and of course, fireworks. It was quite the show. The course which had been set was simple in concept, with a flowing gate sequence, but what many racers overlooked was the very simple possibility of making a cumulating mistake (being slightly off-line in the first gate, more so in the second, then completely missing the third). I was wary of this, but still, my first run had a few too many minor mistakes, and I landed in 17th. My second run, I was prepared for, and I ran the upper two-thirds of the course flawlessly before I ran into trouble at gate 17 (seems like a bad number for me!). I was too far left, and had to loop back up for the gate. I knew this lost me valuable time, and I paddled like a mad woman to make up for it, but in the end I finished 20th – right on the edge for semifinals. The last boat was from China, and it was a close race which ended in me missing semis by one-tenth of a second. I was devastated to say the least, and knew that is would take something extravagant for me to forgive myself. The European Journey had come to its close, and although my cultural and training experiences had been out-of-this-world, I was bitter about my race performances. I returned home gratefully – three months is a very long time to be away, and it was wonderful to see my friends and family again (granted, not so great to make up the two weeks of AP Calculus I missed) and I spent my days catching up with all of the work and people I had missed. Homecoming of my senior year came and went - glittering girls in their candy-colored dresses, boys in their pumped-up kicks, tuxes, and shutter-shades, and school spirit the equivalent of nationalism in the cold war – and I grew conscious of one last opportunity for me to redeem myself in my eyes, for my performances in the past season. Nationals. Initially, I had ruled the race out of the possibility. I had missed so much school, and to fly to North Carolina for the race would mean missing more. But with the encouragement of my parents and a personal desire for redemption, I went for it. So three days before the race, I hopped on a night-flight to Charlotte, and found myself once again in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I had three training sessions before the race (only one of which was on the race venue), but I felt the deep-seated desire to perform. The race day came, and I did well during my runs on qualification day. Overjoyed, I moved into semifinals in first place. My frustration from the summer became channeled, and I plunged into my semis run with gusto. I finished happy and fairly confident, even though the course had been more challenging. To my intense joy, I progressed on to Finals, still clinging to first. As I paused in the start gate before my final run, I realized that this was it. The point I had been reaching to get to since that bitter beginning in Prague, and a final spark of aggression filled me. The timer sounded, and I took that last once of frustration and channeled it into my run. I negotiated the gates with an intense desire to perform to my personal pinnacle. Although I had several touches, my speed was enough to carry me through, and passing the finish line, a huge smile broke across my face. That was the performance I had worked for. My friends and fellow competitors bobbed in the eddy at the bottom of the run and we hugged one another, laughing and grateful to make it as far as we had. The U.S. Team leader, William Irving came running down the side of the river, and shouted to me, “Hailey, you are in first!”

It was a long summer, with an incredible number of highs and lows, but the joy I felt at capturing the Gold at Nationals was purely relieving. Two of my best friends, Colleen Hickey and Catie Vuksich stood on the podium next to me, and I felt so grateful to be there with them, and to have reached that point at the end of my season. There are so many people who I have to thank. Joel McCune, the coach who helped me kick off my season, Pierrick, Vincent, Manu, and a whole host of wonderful French coaches, Jakobe, my Slovakian coach at Worlds, Darren Bush and the folks at Rutabaga, Werner, Keen, Pyranha, and Level Six….but most of all, my Parents. Without them, none of this ever would have happened. And thank you, for reading this, and following this whitewater story wherever it leads.