Training with the best

As most of you know, pentathlon is not a particularly popular sport in the US. Unlike some European countries, we dont have the sport culture for pentathlon here in the States. But we do have a phenomenal training facility and fantastic weather here in Colorado. So we have put our location to good use and invited two top international teams out to train with us this fall.

The Egyptian pentathlon team arrived here a few weeks ago and left today. They have two of the top women in the world and their men are also solid. It was a bit of the fire hose treatment to get back in shape with these guys here. We really only fence together, but it makes a big difference to have other athletes to bout in fencing.

The Russian team is the deepest and most decorated team in the world, and they came out here last weekend to train with us as well. The top six Russian athletes are here. To put the quality of this team in perspective, the 6th Russian athlete would easily make the World Team for almost any other country in the world. Currently Russia has the reigning Olympic Gold Medalist, the World Silver Medalist, a World Cup Final Champion, and a Junior World Champion. The Russian team will be here for the next few weeks, but I am thoroughly enjoying the chance to bout with these guys. I took three years of Russian in college, but my speaking skills are at best shaky and so communication is a bit tough. None of the Russians are proficient in English.

So the next couple weeks will be filled with as much fencing as possible as we try to hone our skills on the Russian team. Once the Russians go home, I'll start focusing more on my swim and run as we head into the winter.

Here is a picture of me fencing Andree Mosiev, the 2004 Olympic Gold Medalist, at a fencing practice this weekend. I actually got the touch on this one by hitting Mosiev right under his hand.

A Weekend with Champions

Last weekend the USOC hosted the "Reach the Peak" seminar for about 30 potential and current Olympians. We started on Friday and had sessions on Saturday and Sunday. In a nutshell, the purpose of the program was to learn how to improve our performance and to achieve your personal peak in sports.


One of the high points of the weekend was seeing two athletes whom I have tremendous respect for. The first was Brandon Slay, a gold medalist wrestler from the 2000 Olympics. The other was Dan O'Brien, the 1996 decathlon gold medalist but better known for the Reebok "Dave and Dan" commercials.


Brandon and I go back a ways. In the summer of 2000, my aunt and uncle decided to buy me a ticket to watch the Sydney Olympics because they believed it would be motivating for me in my own Olympic pursuit. My brother Justin did not want to be left out so he joined me on my way to Sydney. After a spectacular 10 day trip which culminated with an American woman winning the silver medal in pentathlon, we boarded the Sydney to LA flight for the 15 hour trip. Like good frequent fliers, Justin and I had made sure that we had window and aisle bulkhead seats to stretch our legs. When we boarded the plane, there was a girl sitting in the seat between ours who introduced herself as Tiffany. Over the course of the flight, she told us that she had been down in Sydney watching her brother wrestle. We asked how he had done and she told us he won the silver medal. Tiffany and I exchanged contact information because I was going to be in Dallas where she lived a few weeks later. When I went to Dallas, my friend Wendel and I took Tiffany and one of her friends out to eat one night.


A couple days after returning home I saw in the news that Tiffany's brother had been awarded the gold medal following a doping violation of the wrestler who defeated him. Brandon had been a resident athlete in Colorado Springs, but had taken a hiatus from wrestling following his win and came back about a year later. A number of months later I met Brandon for the first time at the OTC. I had a lot of respect for him and got to know him over the next year or so. Somewhere around 2002, Brandon decided to retire and I had not seen him since until this weekend.


So to culminate a long story, I was surprised to see Brandon on the bus to the conference this weekend. As we were getting off the bus, he said hi, I said hi, and I asked how his sister was doing. This turned several heads as a number of the other athletes questioned the wisdom of asking an Olympic gold medalist wrestler about his sister! Anyway, Brandon worked with us all weekend and here is a picture from the last day of the conference.





Growing up, I was a huge Olympic fan. I remember watching the Olympics as early as 1984 when I was only 6. By 1992, I was glued to my parents 13 inch black and white TV for the two weeks of the Games. In the lead up, Reebok decided to run a series of ads on Dave Johnson and Dan O'Brien, the top two decathletes in the US. They were expected to finish 1-2 at the Olympics and the marketing campaign was about which one would win. Dan failed to qualify for the Olympics after not clearing a single jump in the pole vault. Dave went on to win. I have read Dave Johnson's book and I met him a number of years ago. Dan's story is also very interesting. It was obviously devastating for a medal favorite to fail to qualify for the Olympics, and it was interesting to hear how he dealt with it. Dan also had a lot of tips on how to get your mind ready for competing at the Olympics. He really has the mindset of a champion and it was an honor to be able to pick his brain for a few hours. His advice was especially pertinent because pentathlon and decathlon have similar complexities. So here is a picture of me with Dan.
All in all, it was a very inspiring weekend. It is such a privilege to have two of the greatest athletes in the world take the time to mentor me and the other athletes as we strive to follow in their footsteps. Thanks a bunch guys and I hope we all make you proud some day!


I'll try to get better about posting blog updates. The Russian and Egyptian teams are here training with us right now and I'll post some updates on that over the weekend. Until next time...

Back to work

A lot of people have been asking how training is going. Here is a quick look into how I structure my season and how I will prepare for the Olympics next summer.

First, I took a long needed break from pentathlon. In the last two years, I have taken less than two weeks off. While I love to train and find practice and competition fun and rewarding, eventually it takes a toll on your mind and body. After finding out that I would not go to Beijing for the World Cup Final, I immediately put up my equipment and started my first real break of this Olympic cycle.

The term "break" can be a bit misleading though. During my break, my coaches had me stay in shape with biking and strength training. While it is important to get away from your sport during a break, it is also important to not let yourself get too out of shape.

So faced with the choice of sitting around playing on Niul's X-Box or doing something productive, I decided to go with the more responsible rout. A realtor approached me with a great deal on a fixer upper house and my dad teamed up to buy it. That gave me something to do with my time that was both productive and rewarding. I hired a couple of my teammates to come over and help and we knocked out a complete rehab of a 1700 sqft house within 3 weeks.

So now it's back to work to get ready for the World Cup season. Though still 5 months out, training starts now to be ready for those competitions. To begin, I am doing a lot of work on technique. For instance, today Alan and Genadijus (both of whom have PhDs in sports science) will be working with me in the pool. We are using cameras and some high tech testing devices to find out where I am losing speed in the water due to increased drag or decreased power. We have a 60 inch TV set up on the side of the pool so that I can immediately see the test results, watch my stroke, and make instantaneous corrections. This is a bit of an iterative process as we work to determine the optimal body position and stroke for my swimming. The reason you do this at the beginning of the season is that I have a few hundred thousands strokes between now and the Olympics so any change will feel natural by next summer. We think we can shave a couple seconds off my 200 time without much effort by doing this sort of high tech feedback.

I am starting up running also. Last season I was plagued with a strained abdominal muscle for most of the season. Through some outstanding medical care by Dr. Gary Wood and some cross training, we think that this problem will be a distant memory shortly. Taking a break has helped, but we wont know how effective the treatment has been until I get back into running. Alan Arata will probably also work on my running stride technique using video analysis on a treadmill to determine how efficient my stride is. Again, you make your changes early so that by the time of the competition it seems very natural.

Shooting will start up next week. I was finally able to procure a computerized training aid that I can use at my house to supplement my training. This program gives immediate feedback to how much pressure is on the trigger, how much the gun moves, and how steady the gun is at the point the shot breaks. All this information is displayed in real time on my laptop and helps identify problems and train correct habits.

The Egyptian pentathlon team will arrive on Monday and I expect we will have great fencing with them. Also, the New York Athletic Club recently extended me an invitation to join their team which gives me access to some of the best fencers in the country. My coaches want me to do a lot of fencing this fall when my run/swim volumes are low so that I can lay off a bit later on.

And that leaves riding. I intend to head out to Michael Cintas' place in California for an elite riding clinic in December. I have discovered that it is better for me to train riding in spurts, riding twice a day for about a week, then to train once or twice a week. I will probably visit Michael's place a couple times a year to make sure that my riding is set for Beijing next year.

So that is what my training looks like. Sorry for those of you who have been checking for an update on my blog. I'll try to do a little better now that I am back into a training regiment.

Jet lag

I've lost track, but I think I have flown over to Europe and back around 40 times. That includes the 5 times that I bounced back and forth in the past 6 months. So you would think that after so much travel, I would be used to the 8 hour time zone change. Not so much!

My wife Cami, who went over to watch Worlds last week, seems to have no problem with jet lag. When she arrived in Berlin, she adjusted within a day. When we came home, she was able to sleep in until 7am. I, on the other hand, have been waking up between 4:30 and 5 every morning and unable to get back to sleep. Among frequent travelers it is well known that some people adjust well to jet lag and others dont. Unfortunately for me, I have never seemed to adjust well; but at a certain point you just cope with it anyway.

I am still waiting to find out if I will be flying out to Beijing in two weeks. The World Cup Final is in Beijing on the 15th of September. It is the "test event" for the Olympics, meaning that they will use the same venues and staff for the event as for the Olympics. (I think that all sports are required to have a test event prior to the Olympics). If I get the invitation to go, the Olympic Committee will expedite my visa and put me on the same flight as Dennis. If I dont get the invitation to go, I am done for the season and will start my break and preparation for next season.

So back to jet lag. If I fly out to Beijing, it will be the 7th major flight of the past 6 months. Because it takes about a week to adjust each way, I will have spent around 14 of 25 weeks since March jet lagged. (By the way, at about 24 hours per flight, I have spent 2 weeks on airplanes since March as well). It's part of the job as an athlete. And while I can't say I enjoy throwing away 2 weeks of my life to sitting on an airplane, I love what I do and I would not trade it for anything!

Better Late than Never

So I have been pretty bad about keeping new content on my blog lately. In Berlin, the only place we had internet was at "Easy Internet" upstairs from a Dunkin Donuts. Although it was near the hotel, it was still a pain to get there, find a working computer, and suffer through a slow internet connection. Furthermore, we could not connect our computers online so there was no way to upload video or pictures. Enough of my whining though, now for the updates from the competition!

Making the final at Worlds is always a big accomplishment. As I have mentioned before, there are always a few great athletes who are knocked out in the semi-final and you always breath a big sigh of relief when the semis are over.

The final itself was probably the toughest competition in the history of pentathlon. My score of around 5250 on a long course swim and a difficult run would normally have put me well into the top 15. This year, it was good for 29th. I was hoping for a top 20, but I cant complain too much about my place. At the end of the day, you only control how you compete and I was pretty happy with my overall score.

The women's final went very well for Sheila. She finished 9th overall, the first time a US women has finished in the top 10 at Worlds in 8 years. Mickey had a rough time in fencing and finished 29th.

At Worlds, we also compete in the relay event. This is not an event in the Olympics yet, but it is possible that it will be added by 2012 as a second pentathlon event at the London Games. The relay consists of 3 athletes. Shooting is 3x10 shots, fencing is 3x3 touches, swimming is 3x100 meters, riding is 3x9 jumps (on 3 different horses), and running is 3x1500 meters. Our team was me, Dennis, and Sam Sacksen. We knew ahead of time that we did not have a realistic chance at a medal, but it is always fun to compete in the relay anyway. We held our own in shooting (apparently I saved up my best shoot for the relay!), but got pretty well schwacked in fencing. Swimming we were also middle of the pack. In riding, we drew a really bad set of horses and that cost us a top 8 finish. (My horse was completely blind in the left eye). We rode the horses we drew pretty well, but sometimes you just have to realize that it't not your day. In running I think we also held our own, but finished a disappointing 12th overall.

After the competition at Worlds, there is always a party. This year, DKB, a German bank and major sponsor of the competition, hosted the party at the riding venue. It was amazing with demonstrations in martial arts, a live band, and an awesome private fireworks display. It was great that Cami was able to be there for that and we were able to enjoy it together.

After a late night, we had a 7am bus to the airport. Cami came along with me, but her flight was a couple hours later. I was flying with Dennis, Mickey, and Emily; but Cami was on a different airline and had a different itinerary. We all had breakfast together in the Berlin airport, then went our separate ways.

22 hours later, we were back in Colorado Springs. When you fly, it does not bother you very much if the airline is delayed on a connecting flight because it only effects your layover. When your last flight is delayed, it really stinks because you get home that much later (and after 20 hours of travel, every extra minute grits on your nerves). United always seems to have problems getting out of Chicago on time, and yesterday was no exception. After an hour delay prior to boarding, we sat on the runway for another hour waiting to take off. Fortunately, I slept from the time we boarded until we landed in Colorado Springs; but the delay cost us getting dinner at the OTC that night.

I had just enough time to pick up my truck from the OTC and get back to the airport when Cami landed. Cami made it on time, but her luggage decided to stay on vacation for a little longer. We think her bags will arrive today at some point.

I might be flying to Beijing in a couple weeks. Right now, I am the first reserve for the World Cup Final. I promise better pictures from Beijing if we have internet!

For now, it's unpack and get back to training. If I am in World Cup Final, I will have to train pretty hard for the next two weeks that I am home to get back in shape.

At World Championships in Berlin

The story of how we got to Berlin sounded like a bad joke... "So there was a bus with 10 Egyptians, 7 Americans, and a Polish bus driver who did not speak any English...)" What would take just over 2 hours in a car took us 6 hours by bus with what must be the most inept bus driver in all of Poland... and mind you, we are talking about Poland here! (For those of you who dont know, I am Polish so you can make fun of me also). The real high point of the bus ride was when the bus driver got lost trying to find the hotel in Berlin. He would pull over to some unsuspecting pedestrian, open the door of the bus, and yell out "Bahnhaustrassen" was the name of the street that we were trying to find. The shocked pedestrian would, inevitably, jump back and yell "nine!" implying that they did not want to go there. Eventually, we found the hotel despite the best attempts by our bus driver to get as lost as possible.

Today was the Semi Finals of the World Championships for men. Our women competed yesterday and Sheila and Mickey both easily made it through to the final. They will compete in the final tomorrow. I think that Ted has found a way to have live results on my website, so feel free to check it here. Otherwise, go to Cardsys.hu and good luck navigating a Hungarian website!

In World Cups and World Championships, we have to compete in semi-finals to narrow the field down to 36 for the final. The reason for this is that it would be logistically impossible to fence the roughly 100 competitors and difficult to find the nearly 60 horses you need for that many athletes. As a result, we compete in shooting, fencing, swimming and running and the top 12 athletes from the 3 semi-final groups move on to the final.

Semi-finals always take their toll on a few of the best athletes. Today in my group, the guy who won World Championships last year did not advance. I started in 11th before the run with the 2004 Olympic Gold Medalist right behind me. We both made it through to the final, but the Russian who started right behind us and recently earned a slot at the 2008 Olympics at European Championships did not.

Dennis was very close to making the final, but a bad fence left him in 14th place Niul and Sam did not have good days today and finished farther down.

So on Sunday I will be competing in the final. We will do all 5 sports and nothing from the semi-finals will carry on. You start with a clean slate and the top 36 go head to head. We will try to have results and maybe even some pictures loaded onto the website by early Sunday morning in the US.

Thats all for now. More tomorrow on the women's competition.

World Championships Training Camp

My apologies to those of you who have been checking for more frequent updates. Since getting back from Rio, it has been a very busy time for me and I have not had much time or ability to blog.



Last week, we left Colorado on Tuesday for Europe. We flew to Chicago, then overnight to Frankfurt, then to Berlin. From Berlin, we took a 3 hour bus ride to Drzonkow (pronounced John-kov) Poland. World Championships are not until this upcoming Friday, but we wanted to adjust to the time and the climate before competing.



Drzonkow itself is a tiny town on the outskirts of Zelona Gora, a small city in western Poland. There is a facility here that is really great to train at, but the town itself literally has one small shop and nothing else. Fortunately, I have my laptop (with dvd player) and Niul brought his Xbox 360. Until yesterday we were playing the Xbox on a small black and white TV. Last night, Janusz produced a projector (courtesy of the local pentathlon club) and we now play Xbox on a 70 inch screen in our hotel rooms!



There is only one internet connection here and I have not been able to hook up my laptop to the internet. Therefore, I don't have any pics yet for the blog; but I am hoping to load some in next week. The high point of the trip (aside from playing 70 inch Xbox) has been trying to snap photos of my teammates sleaping with funny expressions on their faces. Yes, we really are that bored!



Tomorrow we are getting on a bus at 8am for Berlin. I expect that it will take 3-4 hours to get to our hotel in downtown Berlin and after that we will try to visit the competition site. Cami is leaving Colorado to come out here tomorrow and will arive on Thursday in Berlin. That will be the first time that Cami has been able to join me at a competition this year. Our former exchange student, Vanessa, lives in Berlin and is going to show Cami around and give her the full tourist experience.



That's all for now. I'll try to get some competition updates out from Berlin after tomorrow.

Back to the Grindstone

I have gotten a lot of emails asking what is next and what has happened since Pan Ams. The season is not yet over, in fact we head out in about 10 days for World Championships in Europe. I'll be posting a blog from over there as frequently as I can, but here is what has gone on the last couple days.

After the run in the competition, I was grabbed by a competition official who had a doping control form for me to sign. Then he had to stay with me while I put on the award uniform, received my medal, and conducted a press conference. We did not even have time to warm down from the running, which made for a good deal of soreness over the next few days.

Doping control was run by the Brazilian doping agency. WADA, the World Anti Doping Agency, was on hand to observe. Furthermore, the USOC policy is to have a US medical staff observer represent the athlete as well to make sure that all rules are followed. Stakes are very high with drug testing, and it is important to make sure you are very careful to follow all the rules. As an athlete, it is a bit nerve wracking because you start going back over the past few days in your head and wondering if you ever left your sports drink bottle unattended or if anyone could have tainted something you ate. Furthermore, the US Anti Doping Agency is constantly telling us that many supplements and products on the market are tainted and will test positive for substances not listed on the label. (I only use Shaklee products which I am very confident of their purity). You still think about all the possible ways in which something tainted could have entered your system through food or sabotage. And while I dont believe most of the stories from athletes who have tested positive and claimed tainted food/supplements or sabotage was to blame, you have to believe that it has and does happen.

After doping control was over, it took several hours to get back to the village. The bus made several stops along the way to pick up athletes at other venues. This turned out to be a very good thing for myself and Josh, the Canadian athlete who won the Bronze. In doping control, you drink a ton of fluid so that you can supply a sample. The problem is that you have to drink so much that for the next couple hours you are earning frequent flier miles going to and from the bathroom.

Back in the village, I quickly changed and met up with the rest of the team and our media guy for a team diner. We went to a Brazilian meat restaurant where they had an all you can eat setup of the best beef, pork, chicken, and sushi I have ever had. Honestly, I think I had more food that night than I have had in a single sitting in the last year. (I cant eat during competitions so I had worked up a bit of an appetite).

The next day, Dennis and I went to a media event on Sugarloaf Mountain, one of two very famous mountains in Rio. The views were spectacular and we had a good media write up afterward: http://www.cnw.ca/fr/releases/archive/July2007/27/c2057.html

After coming back from Sugarloaf, we started our marathon trek home. A 2pm bus took us the 20 minute drive to the airport. Our flight was at 6:30pm (not sure why the USOC wanted us there 2 hours before United even opened the ticket counters), so we bummed around the airport and got some dinner. We flew Rio to Sao Paolo which is about 45 minutes. In Sao Paolo, we got into the Red Carpet Club and waited the 2 hours for the next flight, a 10 hour ride up to Washington Dulles. Fortunately I slept most of the way to Washington which left me wide awake for our 6 hour layover in Washington (during which time, Dennis and I discussed ways we could torment our travel office as much as they torment us:)). Then it was about a 4 hour flight to Denver and about an hour and a half to get back to the Springs. Added all up, it was about 30 hours door to door.

So back in Colorado, it is now training as usual. World Championships begin on the 16th of August in Berlin. We are going to go to Poland for a week ahead of time to acclimate to the time zone change so I am only at home for 12 days. Worlds is expected to be the largest and most difficult competition since the last Olympics, so we have no down time before leaving next week.

Once Worlds is over, I'll probably be able to take some time off of pentathlon training. You never really want to lose your fitness, so I'll probably spend a couple weeks biking and lifting to change up my routine and heal up some of my season's injuries.

Thanks for all the support everyone has been giving. It has been great to get so many emails through the website, and I am happy to have so many of you following my athletic endeavours.

Gold Medal!!!!

As many of you already know, I won the gold medal today. Along with the win comes an automatic, by-name slot in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Before anything else, let me get out my thank you's. Thanks to God for giving me the talent to do this, my wife Cami for standing by me through a ton of stress and travel, my parents for always supporting me, my coaches for being so dedicated to me, and my friends for always being there.

Today was pretty solid all around for me. I had a decent shoot, a good fence, good swim, good ride, and led the run all the way through. In pentathlon, you typically dont have to be great in everything, you just have to be good in every event to do well; and that was today for me. While there will be a lot of work between now and Beijing, it is great to have the qualification over with. Thanks again for all the support of those of you out there who have encouraged and believed in me all these years.

Now for the fun part. Thanks to our media guy, Cecil Bliker, I have a fair amount of video from today. First up, swimming:



Then riding:



Here is some running:



And here is the medal ceremony:



We fly home tomorrow. I look forward to seeing those of you back in Colorado when we get back!

Eli

Results after 3 events

Going into the ride, Eli is in 3rd place overall. Dennis, the other American, is in 10th, and not feeling very well. Eli is currently behind a Brazilian and a Canadian. You can see nearly-real-time results at http://www.rio2007.org.br/data/pages/8CA3C784139C20FF01139C2C41550F77.htm. Stay tuned!

Cami

Pictures from today and info for tomorrow

Pentathlon has ups and downs. Today, Sheila had a pretty solid day and was sitting well until the riding event. It was a fairly high course (max height of the jumps was 4 feet), and she had trouble getting her horse going from the start. Mickey moved up a couple places in riding and then ran into 3rd place to win an Olympic qualifying slot. This is Mickey's first time qualifying for the Olympics, and needless to say she is very happy.

Dennis and I spent the morning relaxing and trying to catch buses to the women's competition. After several attempts; we did make it out, but only in time to watch the ride and run. Dennis has been feeling a bit under the weather with a cold so please keep him in your prayers everyone.

Below are some pics from today. I have some video that I am going to probably post tomorrow because it takes a while to load.

It is 8pm Rio time and I am getting eaten alive by mosquitoes while posting this blog. Dennis and I have had intermittent hot water in our rooms which will make it interesting to do the age old ritual of shaving down (all you former swimmers out there know exactly what I mean). We also have to pack for the competition tomorrow and make sure that everything is in working order. Because we are competing so far from the village and the competition will move so rapidly, it is pretty important to have everything packed in such a way as to have a smooth transition between events tomorrow.

So tomorrow we will start with shooting at about 9am Rio time (8 Eastern, 6 Mountain). Then we go right to fencing at about 10am. From there, we swim at 1pm, ride at 2:30 and run at 4:50pm. That means it will all be over by 4pm Eastern and 2pm Mountain time. Cami is planning on updating the blog with results as fast as she can. I have a cell phone here and will call her after every event with an update. Hopefully this will work and we can get everyone results in a timely manner.

That is all for tonight folks. Thanks for your prayers!

Eli

Women's Results

These are unofficial scores: Mickey won the bronze medal and a spot at the 2008 Olympic Games. Sheila finished about 10th after a very disappointing ride. We expect Sheila to win a spot later on this summer, but it was sad to see her have a difficult ride here. Congrats Mickey!

Swimmers clean up

This morning, Dennis and I caught a bus to watch the final session of the swimming events. Because both of us grew up swimming, we could not pass on the opportunity to see a world class swim meet live. The swimming venue is probably about a half mile as the crow flies, but it took almost 20 minutes to get there because of the bus rout. On the way over, we met a Brazilian swimmer who goes to school and swims for Arizona.

Once at the venue, we followed the swimmers into the athlete section. I am not sure we were supposed to get in without paying for a ticket (since that was not our sport venue), but we were able to get into the stands without a problem. We sat with the US Swim Team and they were louder than most fans at a football game.

The US team cleaned up big time winning a number of medals. The crowd was really into it and the swimmers were very friendly (albeit a bit curious about who we were and why we were in the athlete section) to us. Dennis and I wound up sitting next to Ava Ohlgren who is an NCAA champion in the 400IM from Auburn (sorry all my in-laws from Georgia!). Ava had just finished a successful Pan Ams with a win in the 200 Free two days ago and wanted to learn more about pentathlon.

Here are some videos from this morning:

This is the 400 Medley Relay, which the US won while setting a new Pan Am record.



And this is the 50 Free. Gary Hall is in lane 7, but the Brazilians went 1-2 and the crowd went crazy. The guy who won swims in the US for Auburn.

Posting comments

A number of people have told me that they are having trouble posting comments to my blogs. This blog appears in two places, one on my webpage at EliBremer.com (which is where most of you are seeing this) and also at http://elibremerpentathlon.blogspot.com/ . For some reason, no one can post through the EliBremer.com site, but you can post at the blogspot page. The blogspot is embedded into my webpage, so if you post there it will show up on my page. Anyway, I would love to hear from all of you who have been trying to post comments. Thanks and let me know if you are still having problems.

Eli

July 21st

Last night we said goodbye to the shooting and fencing teams. Because we train with the fencers and know a lot of the shooters, we hung out with them for a bit last night in the international center (a hangout area near the dining hall for all athletes). When I woke up this morning to go to get snapped back into shape by the resident chiropractor, I saw Cody Mattern (fencer) getting treated in the sports med clinic. He told me that all flights were canceled in and out today because of an air traffic controller strike in Brazil. No one has been able to confirm the exact cause, but I do know that no one left or came into the Games today from the US. We are expecting the arrival of Scott Christie (one of our coaches from Colorado) tomorrow, but so far we have not heard if he will be coming in or not. Athletes get to the Games several days out so I dont think this will impact anyone unless it goes on for a while. On a side note, Brazil is hosting Pan Ams in an attempt to prove that they can host a major Games event. The Olympics has never been hosted in South American, and Rio would like to be the first city down here to win an Olympic bid. The organizers have done a real stand up job putting this together. Hopefully the airline problems will not effect their future bid prospects.

Today was the first time we have been able to sleep in since leaving Colorado on Tuesday. Our first practice was running at 8am, followed by breakfast and catching the bus to our venue at 9:40. (The buses from the village leave EXACTLY on time, so you have to be at least 5 minutes early or risk of missing your shuttle.) After the 40 minute ride to the venue, we shot and swam and caught the bus back to the village. It's the dead of winter down here, which means it is about 80 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and a bit humid. While that is not really all that hot, I am not used the humidity so I am trying to stay inside and away from the sun as much as possible. The afternoon was capped off with a fencing lesson from Janusz and a nice lazy couple of hours watching DVDs I brought. Dennis and Mickey went to watch beach volleyball on Copa Cobana, and I think Sheila is nose deep in a book somewhere.

Now for the fun part. Here are the pics that I promised yesterday:

This is the shooting and range and fencing sall. The targets are electronic and the scores are shown on the computer screen next to the athlete. The fencing sall is in the same room. They were setting it up today, but it should have 6 strips setup by tomorrow. It is nice that both shooting and fencing are in the same place. It means spectators will not have to find another venue and athletes will have a more leisurely transition between the two sports.

Here is the swimming pool. It is an outdoor 50 meter pool with 10 lanes. I dont have a feel for how fast it is, but I am guessing it is pretty quick. The pool is about 7 feet deep all the way across and it has fairly cold water. In the background of the photo on top, you can see a stadium. That is the field hockey stadium. Because this is a Games event, there are a lot of other sports being competed in our area.

This is the dining hall. There are around 5,000 athletes here and a bunch of coaches, medical, and staff on top of that. The dining hall has 12 food lines that serve virtually all day. At it's peak, there are a couple thousand athletes in here. The room itself looks like a temporary tent that will probably be taken down after the games.

Here are some views from my room during the day and night. We are about 6-8 miles from the beaches so we cant see them, but it's still a cool view. This village was constructed for the 07 Pan Am Games and all the units are already sold out. One Brazilian soccer player bought an entire building as an investment. The Para Pan Am Games will come in after we leave, and then they will turn the keys over to the new residents.

Fun in the athlete village

I took some great photos today. There was one with me and Dennis and the entire Cuban field hockey team (one member vigorously trying to sell me some fine Cuban cigars). There were great pictures of our competition venues. And I had some photos of the US men's epee fencing team (two of whom train with us) beating the tar out of Puerto Rico. At least I thought I did. About half way through the fencing match, I started wondering what the little flashing red drawing that looked like a memory card was the kept appearing on the screen of my camcorder/camera... Oh well, I'll have some more photos tomorrow if I remember to put the memory card back in.

We were able to find our way around the village pretty well last night, and today was a training day. We left early, at about 7:45 (4:45 Colorado time) for our competition venue. It is about a 40 minute drive from the village out there, much short of the hour and a half it would take if we did not have the designated Pan Am traffic lanes. We shot and swam at the venue and then took a bus back at 11:30. That is when we ran into the Cuban field hockey team. They were really nice and serenaded us for the 40 minute ride back to the village. They all seemed to be pushing Cuban cigars, and I am guessing that nearly the entire team brought a few boxes to try to sell.

This afternoon, we went to watch Seth Kelsey, Cody Mattern, and Ben Ungar fence in the men's epee team competition. Seth was at the Academy with me and he and Cody are coached by my fencing coach, Janusz. They got off to a rough start, but rallied massively at the end to put a good thumping on Puerto Rico. That put them in the top 4 of the tournament. We left after that, and the team lost to Cuba, but beat Canada for a bronze medal.

The food here is not all the best, but boy do they know how to grow beef! They also have an apple soda that we dont have in the States that we discovered at dinner tonight. I'll try to post some pics of the dining hall tomorrow because it really is amazing. They feed thousands of athletes constantly and it is always a writhing mass of bodies moving through there.

Tomorrow we have another training day. If the weather is nice, we are planning on going down to the Copa Cobana beach to watch a medal round of beach volleyball. Aside from that, we are pretty much settled in and waiting for our competition.

Oh, we did get a couple of pictures off of Mickey's phone. It's not all fun and games here, but there is an awful lot of it!

Dennis on the left and me on the right.

Me on the left and Mickey on the right.

Arrived in Rio

After a 4 hour delay in Sao Paulo, we arrived in Rio. It is pretty amazing the logistics that go into an event like this. We were greeted at the airport by the Games organizers and shuttled through passport control and customs. Here is a picture of our pistols being confiscated (Brazilian law will not allow us to have the gun outside of the shooting range).

Next, we waited in a pretty long line to board the buses to the village. There were lines everywhere, but all in all things moved very quickly.

After that, it was about a 30 minute bus ride through Rio to the Athlete village.

Rio's roads are very crowded so the organizers have blocked off a lane on all major roads for Pan Am vehicles. That really facilitates quick transportation throughout the city and to all venues.

Here is the Athlete Village where the athletes from all countries stay:

There was high security to check into the athlete village as well:

Dennis and I are on the seventh floor of our apartment building:

So that is all for photos today. I am having trouble uploading pictures, so I'll try again tomorrow.

Finished processing

This morning, we started with an early run and then went to processing. It took a lot less time than planned so I have the time to upload some pics from this morning.

This afternoon we have a swim workout and then we head out to Dulles.

Clearing at George Mason

As with all "Games" events, athletes for Pan Ams have to process with the US Olympic Committee. For the 2007 Pan Am Games, processing is at George Mason University in Washington DC.

We arrived here this afternoon after flying from Denver this morning. Because of the time change, there was only time to swim and have dinner tonight. We are processing with some tennis and track athletes tomorrow. Processing consists of a briefing on conduct and conditions in Rio, fitting of Team USA apparel, and photos for the media. That should all take about 4 hours. After processing, we will have around 4 hours to train and rest before heading out to Dulles airport for our flight to Rio (via Sao Paulo).

We just saw on the news that a plane crashed on the runway in Sao Paulo, going off the runway and crashing into a petrol station. It appears that it was not a United flight (all Pan Am athletes are flying in on United), so hopefully we did not have any athletes on it.

More to come about processing tomorrow.

Off to Pan Ams

On Tuesday the 17th of July, I will be heading out to Washington DC to process for the Pan Am Games. We will spend Wednesday morning picking up apparel, getting briefed on conduct, and taking photos. After a couple hours of practice, we will head back to the airport and catch a flight to Rio via Sal Paolo. It will be about 12 hours total flying including the layover.

The flight down to Rio should not be too bad. It's an overnight flight and there is only one hour time difference between Washington and Rio (three to Colorado). We are pretty used to flying back and forth to Europe which is 8 hours different, so this will be a nice change.

I am pretty excited about this upcoming competition. The Pan Am Games are a major event and it should be a fun week at the competition. On top of that, this is the first chance that the US gets to qualify athletes directly into the Olympics. Hopefully we will pick up both a men's and women's spot for the 2008 Olympics.

For those of you not familiar with the other people on the team, let me introduce them. Dennis Bowsher is the other male athlete from the USA. He has had a spectacular year this year including winning a silver medal at a World Cup a couple months ago. Dennis and I will be roommates in Rio. Sheila Taormina is currently ranked 3rd in the world in women's pentathlon. She is a gold medalist from the 1996 Olympics in swimming and a 2 time Olympian in triathlon in 2000 and 2004. If she wins the Pan Am Games, she will be the first athlete in recent times to make the Olympics in 3 different sports. Mickey Kelley is the other female athlete. She has had a fantastic year this year as well. After taking a bronze home from the first world cup, she followed on with a number of very strong performances throughout the world cup season. Janusz Peciak will be the head coach and Michael Cintas will be the riding coach. The team captain is Scott Novack.

That is all I have for now. Stay tuned as I will post updates from the Pan Am Games next week in Rio!