National Qualifier this year qualifies the people who didn't make Olympic trials for Canadian Open aka national team selections #1. Basically this year I had to finish somewhere around top 12 to make Canadian Open.
The first day (Thursday) we skated the preliminary rounds of the 1500 and 500 to qualify us for the final rounds which would be later in the weekend. Only 14 skaters in the 1500 and 12 in the 500 out of 48 made it to the final rounds on the first day. This should have been completely do-able for me since I went in to the competition ranked 9th but then in the first race of the day, the first round of the 1500s I fell.
posted to my tumblr shortly after the fall |
The second day (Friday) was 1500 day. Because I didn't make the top on Thursday I had to skate what's called the repechage. Basically everyone who didn't make it through on Thursday skated three extra rounds and the top 4 from that got to compete against the top 14 in the final rounds. I made it out of the repechage and then had an amazing race to get me into the A final and ended up 6th overall in the 1500 (even though I was so tired from skating three more rounds than everybody else in the final that I didn't really do much).
(after making it out of the semi and into the A final) |
I ended the competition in 6th overall and earned myself a spot in Canadian Open next month. All in all the competition was probably one of the best ones I've ever had and while I'm currently physically and emotionally drained I'm still buzzing over how well it went and excited for the races coming up.
text message I sent to my friend Monday after the competition |
congrats on finishing the race and you did awesome in it!! So cool that you landed a spot in Canadian Open!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much!
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