I’m Back
Dear Friends,
I know, I know it’s been a while. Let me first apologize for not providing you with any more recent updates since last year. But I am finally back in the USA! I just left Kiel, Germany where I had a personal best and a top ten performance at the most recent world cup event. It is now that I am finally finding myself again since the Olympic Games last summer. Wow what an experience! I was in the Beijing Olympics, I made the dream of my life come true, but it also came with some personal changes that are hard to swallow. After investing so much time, energy and money into a such a monumental goal, I never thought of anything else but getting there and winning. I didn’t go to the Olympics to participate..I went to win. But as all obstacles that come your way, you can either let them defeat you, or you can find the resolve to finish what you started. So I found new conviction for London Olympics, with a much more mature and determined Ben, that will be as well prepared on the water as off. The countless hours of training, the endless travels, the homes that always are away from home. Bring it on. I’ve been away from home the last 3 months straight, the longest trip to Europe I’ve ever done, and sometimes it just sucks sometimes when the stores are closed, no friends are around and you don’t speak the language. But Olympic medals don’t grow on trees, and sacrifices are everywhere. This season has been steady positive progress and I am grateful to have such solid progress forward.Thankfully, we raised enough money last year that it’s kept me going well into 2009, this has helped me greatly with jump starting the 2012 campaign (and beating through the recession).Thanks again for all your support. I couldn’t be doing this without what support you have given to me. Inge, Bob, Kim, Susan, Mr. Hough, Joe…thank you so much!
I am excited to continue to share my Olympic stories, this coming week in Pensacola I will be speaking to hundreds of kids at the Junior Olympic Festival sponsored by Subway. Well I am not Jared (the success story for subway) but I can say I will have a great time discussing the ups and downs of the Olympic Games. If your around stop in, or watch some of the action on ABC news!
So in review of 2009 so far-
I’ve won the US National Ranking again for the 6th time in the Miami World Cup event this past January. I set a personal best performance at that event and had lot’s of potential to improve even more considering I hadn’t sailed with fast people much before the event. For February and March I rested more than anything, but I did go to the Olympic Training center in Chula Vista California. I was tested in max strength, aerobic capacity etc. Good news was that I was the fittest guy on the US Sailing team Alpha Graphics, better news is I knew I wasn’t fit. I ate lunch with Michael Phelps, which was pretty cool, he just wanted to be treated like everyone else as a normal Joe. On the way back from California I stopped in to see my sister…I am Officially Uncle Ben. The question is what kind of doctor the “little dude” as I call him will be as both parents are just that, doctors. During March I was on my patent pending “supermodel diet” which consists of fun foods and not a lot of anything else. I wanted to lose ten pounds for the start of the season, so I ended up losing that ten pounds and ready to build up the rest of the season.
It’s a new quadrennial, and I am doing a much more scientific approach to this 4 year campaign (supermodel diet withstanding). I am working with a trainer in the US Olympic Training center and keeping steady notes and diaries of my training regime. I also needed to hire the right coach, after doing some searching I ended up deciding on Christoph Sieber, an Austrian who won gold in Sydney, who not only provides a splendid example of how to win, but mentally he is helping me isolate the right mindset for top performance. I am thankful to US Sailing Team Alphagraphics for keeping his support steady! Additionally I have a heart rate monitor and GPS stuck to me all the time while training and racing so I have more accurate feedback of exactly what I am doing, where I am going, and how fast I am getting there.
The last race of the gold fleet finals in Spain was a sign of things to come. I hit the start just right, led to the left side. Each transition was perfectly in sync with each shift. I rounded in 3rd, and realized finally, I’m back. But it’s why I race, when your on the right shift, there is no better shift.Now I wouldn’t go too far to tell you to be on the right shift in life…but I am sure you can relate. We create our own luck. We create our own energy and success and we have to be there to make it happen. I’d rather go out, knowing I gave It everything I had, than to spend the rest of my life wondering. That’s the way I was made as a person and why I can’t wait for the next regatta to show exactly that. I am sure you experience the same pride, feeling of the work you do. To strive for being better at each day, and hopefully you don’t do it for the money, you do it, because that’s what makes you tick as a person, that lets you wake up in the morning hungry and excited for the day. Well my friends, I couldn’t be more excited about this day, and the rest of the year, and in turn I hope to become the very best sailor and competitor the US has ever had competed for them in the Sailboard class. Did I tell you my feet hurt from standing so long on the board? J
I have to give special thanks for the German team for letting me stay and train with them in Kiel the last few months. I have had great sessions that have increased both my fitness and sailing tremendously. Kiel is notorious for bringing cold and rainy conditions, which is a huge departure from Florida sailing. Kiel is roughly the same longitude as where the Olympics will be, so I wanted to be based in northern Europe and work on my weaknesses in that kind of environment. The saying that even on your bad days you have to perform well was an understatement. One of the only days of racing at the last world cup my boom was cracking in half before the first start of the day, needless to say it ripped apart at the end of the second race..just long enough to keep me in the top ten. That’s lucky sailing!
Remember the goal this next campaign is to medal in London. I don’t want to start counting countries early but I have been top 10-15 countries in the last major world cup events which is a big improvement over the past campaign’s Olympic performance and look forward to getting these up even further. Sometimes I am frustrated and sometimes I am surprised at how well I am doing.But I do know that progress takes time to sink in fully, I am investing now for 3 years ahead, and I promise you all I won’t let up. I have to peak this august in England, where our worlds will be taking place at the Olympic venue. My game now turns to my equipment and lot’s of testing so that I have the edge at the worlds. This is the event of the year for me, it’s where I find out what I need to do to medal in 2012, and I look forward to showing that potential this year. Let’s go get them!!!!
So thanks again for all your love and support. I haven’t forgotten about any one of you. I hope to catch up soon while I am finally back home.
Hope is not a strategy! But you can’t dream without hope! I am somewhere in the middle!
Much Love,
Ben Barger
