I forgot how much fun coaching is. First race tomorrow afternoon.
I've spent the last 8 years or so driving my daughter to races, where I have to sit on the sidelines and cheer. The drive to the race has become ritualistic by now. When it's her and I in a truck at 7:30am driving to Collingwood, we crank the tunes. It got her fired up to compete. It just sorta set the tone.
Yesterday, I drove alone. That sucked more than I expected. I need my co-pilot.
But once I got there, I went from spectator to coach mode. This part was way better than being a parent. I get the kids going. I send them up the hill and lead a little warmup run. I ask them what sort of coach do they want at a race? Do they want the zen master? Do they want the hype man? The general consensus is they wanted calm before their run, and an explosion of volume as they left the gate. I was all ready to oblige, when the request came in that we needed to provide a referee to the course.
A referee in skiing is an experienced coach or official who can overrule a gate judge. We station gate judges every 10 gates or so in slalom. They are responsible for filling out cards with a gate number and a drawing of how the athlete failed to navigate that section of the course. Some disqualifications happen in the blink of an eye in slalom, and at this level there is usually one dispute per race, minimum. I hoped I could avoid that. I could not.
On the first run, racer 51 came down fast, but was a little out of control. I was positioned almost perfectly to see him straddle a gate (one ski ether side of a turning gate). That's an immediate DQ. But it happened so fast. So, so fast. I noted it. I asked the gate judge in charge of that section if he saw it. He did not. My heart sank. I'm gonna have to DQ a kid based on what I'm almost positive I saw, but I doubt the kid even knows what he did because the gate seemed to catch his boot at maybe didn't even hit him in the groin as usually happens.
Then word came up from a gate judge below that he saw the same thing I did. That was reassuring. The gate judge in charge of the flush (three vertical gates in a row) could not make it out because it's really difficult to judge depth when you're straight across from a gate.
Making it worse, the athlete was on on the provisional podium in second place.
Normally when someone straddles, they admit it and ski out. This racer never did. That's his right, but man, I'd put money on that straddle. I just hope I wasn't wrong.
I had to go down to the finish and bring my only disagreement to the attention of the other race officials as part of the jury. As referee I can overrule a gate judge, as I did the gate judge who was responsible for the straddled gate, but the card of the gate judge below who caught it made sure that no one else in that room even questioned me.
So the medal ceremony comes around, and number 51 and his team assumes he has a silver medal wrapped up. When they skip him, a cry goes out that the results were wrong. The guy handing out the medals is perplexed. I know him. I go over and whisper the situation in his ear. He says the athlete can protest, but those are the results.
And then I got to drive back through a snow squall to get the fam. Interesting day.
