Athlete Blogs...  Follow Team USA as they Fight for Gold Around the World...

Photo Credit: Lou DiGesare / Real Judo

After a pretty good showing by the US team in the tournament we are all training really hard at the camp.  We had to move to the Hotel Jazz about 4 blocks away.  The rooms are really small but nice and there is a sauna in the building which everyone is taking advantage of.  The food here is really good and everyday there is fresh fish at dinner.  While some of the teams left there are still alot of bodies here and training is going well.  We work out from 10-11:30 and again from 5-7pm in the same hall that the tournament was held at.  Sunday was Vals birthday and all she wanted was some sushi so her and Kristen managed to find the one Sushi place in town but apparently it wasn't anything to write home about.  Sunday night we went to the athletes banquet and Ronda was named "Most Outstanding" player of the tournament and received a really nice trophy.  As she was walking up to get her award the team started chanting "Hon-da! Hon-da!" and she turned as red as her shirt.  Last night we were given a bit of a scare at 3:30 in the morning when a fire alarm in the hotel went off and everyone had to evacuate and stand in the street.  A fire truck came but apparently it was just a false alarm and everyone stumbled back to their beds.  Thats all the gossip from Sweden.  :)

November 3, 2006

Greetings from Sweden!

I flew with Nick Kossor and Kristen Allan from Washington to London where we met up with Aaron Cohen.  The

flight was non eventful and the hardest part about it for me was ignoring the food carts every time they passed by!  We are in a little town called Boras about 40 minutes from Gutenberg.  Our hotel is right in the middle of a town square and there are lots of little shops and grocery stores that we have been buying our things in.  At almost every turn on the streets you bump into a group of judo people.  The tournament appears to be pretty deep in competitors.  I guess everyone wants a shot at winning the thousand Euro prize money!  We have a joke going with the US Team that if one of us wins it he/she is paying for the whole teams dinner.  Accreditation is going on today and the scales have just been brought in now (about 15 hours before weigh ins) so some people have been playing the guessing game on Val's scale.  The tournament venue is supposed to be a 5 minute walk so some of the team is going to check it out a little later in the afternoon.  As for now everyone is just getting acclimated and getting in their last workouts and such preparing to weigh in and get down to buisness.

Thats all for now!