Date With My Dishy {Olympic Team Trials}

One of Gregg's (but I got to enjoy it, too - bonus!) Christmas gifts was a date to watch the Nordic Combined Olympic Team Trials in Park City on December 29th.  Megan woke up early on a Saturday to come down to our house and spend the day with the kids while Gregg and I got to spend the day watching some pretty hard core athletes compete for a chance to go to PyeongChang.  The first event was ski jumping and even though we thought we were going to miss most of it due to an underestimated crowd and not nearly enough shuttles to the venue, it turned out that the start time was half and hour after we thought and we actually caught the whole thing!  An extra little treat was that when we turned to the right from the same spot we were watching from, we could see a group of skiers practicing aerials - bonus!

Between the jumping and the cross country race there were a few hours of down time.  We spent most of it in the Alf Engen Ski Museum there at the park.  We explored displays about ski history and lots of artifacts from the 2002 Winter Games.  We also watched a few short movies about the same sitting down in the cozy dark theater.  Then we walked back over to the ski jump hill where they had set up the cross country track.  We found a spot near the blue barriers surrounding the track where we could see racers leave and then reenter the stadium on their five lap circuit.  The longest jumper from the first half of the competition gets to go out first in the race portion, and then the others follow at set increments based on their jumps.  Whoever crosses the finish line first is the overall winner of the Nordic Combined and he gets a sure spot on the Olympic Team.  The first guy to start racing was almost a minute ahead of the others out of the start, but in the end it was the fifth guy (out of nine racers) out of the gates, veteran Bryan Fletcher, who took home the W.  We'll be watching for him in the Olympics, for sure.  It was so fun to be right there, cheering them on at such a close vantage point.

We finished the day with some late lunch at Taggart's Grill on the way home and came home to our happy kids who said "I missed you, Mom and Dad" but for sure had a fun time with their auntie Meggy (and Elwood grandparents who came to play, too).  Sign me up for more date gifts!  We had a blast.

That tiny speck on the left hill (K-90) is the flag
bearer skiing down during the National Anthem.

We had a great view, but my phone camera
couldn't pick up the jumpers very well, so
I'll spare you the multitude of pictures that just
look like a ski jump hill with a speck of pepper
in the middle.

bonus videos!

"aerials practice"

(from two vantage points, first from our ski jump

viewing spot, and then from below while we ate

our mid-morning snack of hot dog, tortilla soup,

chocolate muffin and hot cider)

Gift shop perusing.  Gregg was interested in
this book, so I snapped a pic to remember.

The starter!  They start to the right (out of the pic)
and loop up the bottom of both jump hills and then
come out like this and off to the left, down a hill
where we can't see them anymore, back up into
the base area behind us (see photo below, beyond those
crowds), around in front of us, and back into the stadium on
the right track seen here.  Repeat that five times.

Finishing up lap four, I think.

That's Bryan Fletcher coming in for the win!