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!