my last full day in Whistler

First off an apology to my many readers for not having a post Sunday morning. I know for many of you it's a first thing to check with your morning coffee "just what wonderful and wacky things did Randy do yesterday". Well wait no more faithful readers this is a bonus day : 2 posts for the price of one. When we got back to the hotel Saturday evening after our day at the bobsleigh 4 man final we grabbed a dinner and some drinks but didn't make it back to my hotel room until midnight. It seems there was a party going on on another floor and jello shots were involved. No further explanation should be required.

This last full day for me was at the 4 man bobsleigh final. There had been two qualifying runs the previous day and now two final runs today with all 4 runs counting in the score. The sleds get up to 150 km/hr and do the 1.5 km track in just over 50 seconds. The Canada 1 team lost a silver medal by .01 seconds. Over the 4 runs totaling 6+ kms  it's hard to fathom the actual difference(inches probably)that this would make.

We were to do 16 tests that day : 2 selected at random from each of the top 5 finishers and 2 randoms from each of three other random  sleds. To do this we needed 16 chaperones to assist in the notification of the athletes .The attached picture shows our crew being briefed prior to heading off to the finish area.

 

Because of the distance between the finish area and our station we need to use vehicles to transport the athletes and their representatives to the station. Luckily there is a large fleet of GM Chevie and Buick SUV's available for use in the Games and we used some of them for this purpose as well as official use in the doping control administration. Here are some of them :

 

Up at the finishing line itself there were many good photo opportunities before the final round - I had to be back in the station for the final round. 

 

 

The top picture shows the Swiss team arriving and the second one shows one of the Canada sleds in the finish area just prior to being weighed .Notice the wooden runners under the sled to protect the blades. Each sled has a maximum weight including the drivers who as I mentioned before are all big very strong guys. One pilot showed me scrapes on his side from the guy jumping into the sled right behind as they take off.

When the results were known and athletes getting identified my roomie Chris who served as chaperone coordinator at this venue was as busy as a one legged man at a butt kicking contest. However he and his team succeeded and got the athletes down to us for processing. Here is our hero in all his smurf suit glory ready to work...

Sunday I'll be catching a bus and going to Vancouver . My plan is to watch the Gold medal hockey game with Denise, Courtney, and Gary (a guy from  Ottawa who rented a house during the games and worked as a chaperone volunteer) as did Denise and Courtney. I'm running low on my battery for my laptop and need to find a plug somewhere to do my next post .