Dion’s Olympic Dream…racing the World Cup events ***video***

Tim Hornsby, Pat Dolan, Dion Maxwell, Morgan House, Ryan Dolan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello everyone, 

First things first, I’m sorry it has taken me so long to get this out. Internet access has been almost non existent at the places we have been to so far; but these places have been amazing.

We started our trip in the Czech Republic in a small town, if you want to call it that, called Racieca. I prefer to call it “the race course with a bowling alley”, enough said. The weather and the water in Racieca was as good as I could have asked for in my first World Cup. As we got down to business of racing, it was a real shock to see all the countries represented, knowing that these are the best guys and the world and that I was going to get to line up against them.

After the first weekend of racing I had made the semi-finals in the K2 1000m and the K2 500m with different partners. And, now that I think about it, a semi at the world level isn’t bad at all.

As it came to the Monday morning following the first World Cup, all the other teams had gone home or to their own little training spot in Europe. Lucky us, we got to stay in the village with no internet. Racieca does have a train though, which actually was very nice. It was only a 40 minute train ride to Prague which worked out to be about three dollars. Let me tell you all something, if you come to Europe you have to go to Prague; if I could, I would come all the way back just to go there for a week.

Now for the training. After the first World Cup we decided to stick with two crews instead of switching it up. The Dolan brothers on one crew, and Tim and I the other. Tim and I started out really sketchy together, but we started to hit our stride after a few workouts. We were both starting to feel like we could throw down a solid race at the next World Cup.

When we got to the second World Cup in Poznan, Poland, things didn’t work out as we had hoped. We got a new boat which should have helped us, the one we had before was too small. We traded with a smaller crew who had a boat that was way too big for them. The larger boat definitely made a difference; we got off the line at the start with authority. I was impressed; I had been thinking that we were going to be in the back of the pack the whole time. After 300m into the race we started to fall apart and lose each other in our leg drive. This made the boat feel like a tug boat, pretty much like throwing an anchor off the back of the boat! We still made the semi-finals but sadly, were not able to advance to any of the finals.

[Check out the video of Dion and mates at an Olympic training center in Walcz, Poland...work out was 6 times (20 sec on /10 sec off- 30 on / 15 off - 40 on)...that's Dion in the front seat of the green/white K2]

Cheers

Dion maxwell