Hello All,
Well this has been the most incredible, frustrating, life changing and heart wrenching month. As I said in my last post, we definitely had to fight HARD for that last free swim.
The funny thing about big moments like these are all the little pieces that pull the entire experience together. Out of this whole competition there is about one special connection that is still clear in my mind…
Right before the free swim we had a talk with Meng and our captain about what we had to do. We needed to create a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ swim that we could be proud of. I remember standing at the front of the line up waiting to walk on the deck. Meng appeared on the other side of the pool, 25 metres away, put up her arms into a muscle man and then pointed at us as if to say “it’s your time!” With no hesitation I gave her a nod showing that I knew was she was asking for and that we were going to do it. We did.
The next, and final, swim we wanted to rock was the Combo! We knew that it was our last time competing in the Kazan Arena and we needed to make it count…. “Torrential downpour” would be the 1st thing that comes to mind. It was freezing cold, the roof was actually leaking and streets were flooding, causing the judges to wear these comical plastic covers. I remember stepping onto the deck saying, “oh! We’re leaking!”
Because of the difference in temperature between the water and the air, there was a fog over the pool. It was like we had trained all day without goggles (which would create a white film over our eyes) but no, it was just the weather. Took us a while to realize it!! The rain, of course, also brought some challenges for the music system which started to malfunction just before this picture was taken…. If you look close enough you’ll see our teammate in the background signalling to our coaches that the music had cut out. We started tapping underwater and saved the ending! Definitely something we won’t forget!!
Although in some ways we ended this meet disappointed, we couldn’t have asked for better performances. We pulled out great swims when they counted and made our coaches proud. Now time for a little vacation before starting to work on new routines and harder training sessions as we get ready for the Olympic Qualifier in March.
Time to enjoy my summer!!!
– C
Claudia Holzner 