I was just so grateful to be there the entire time, taking every opportunity to just express my gratitude to the coaches and the time and energy they take to put together that rookie camp because it is a lot of work behind the scenes.
They held two camps, you only had to attend one of the two weeks, and then after the rookie camp, after the push championships on Saturday, they ended up inviting back the top two rookies from each camp. They ended up inviting four guys out of the 16 that were there.
Also, to get to that combine, they did a very good job of selecting the athletes. Everyone that was there for the rookie camp was well deserving of it, like incredible athletes.
I thought they assembled the Avengers because they…I guess the previous years, they invited larger groups, like 20 or 30, but this year they were much more selective.
There’s already a big cutoff from virtual combine to rookie camp and then another huge cut from rookie camp to national push championships, which is the most recent camp I was at in September.
That is where returning Olympians come back, returning development athletes, and then a few rookies all come together the beginning of the week. We do an in-person combine, testing your sprints of 15 meter, 30 meter, 45 meter, flying 30, that’s four.
Then, they test broad jump, short toss, three-rep max back squat, and one-rep power clean. There is eight things they are testing on Monday, the start of the week, at 100 percent effort, huge shock to the body.
Tuesday, you have completely off. Wednesday, you do individual pushes. You only do three pushes, one from the back, one from the side, and then the third gives you an option to make up. It’s like if you feel you can improve on one of those positions, you get a third attempt then they take your two best times.
After that, Thursday is rest day. Friday, Saturday, you do combo pushes. Friday was two men, Saturday was three men, and they start to see, “OK, who pushes really well together? Who might be the strong link? Who might be the weak link?” They’re starting to craft the national team that they’re going to send on the World Cup.
Then, after that, what would typically happen next is they would have team trials at the end of October. This year they had to switch it up a little bit because they are doing maintenance work on the Lake Placid track so that they are unable to have time trials.
Normally, they wouldn’t name the national team until after time trials, but this year they had to get creative, use the data they collected from the national push championships, but then also use data from last year for pilots.
Then, they named the national team. Top guys, top two sleds go on the World Cup. Next in the ranks, they put together teams to do the North American cup, which is what I have the opportunity and privilege to go on this year, which I’m really excited about that I get to compete because being brand new to the sport, I actually have never been down a bobsled track.