The Altenberg Curse is Broken!!!!!

WELCOME BACK TO TEAMPIKUSPACE SKELETON

The Curse:  Noelle has been to Altenberg about 5-6 times.  Her first couple of finishes were 13th and 11th and her last 3 or 4 races here she finished 9th and could not break the 9th place curse.  Her last time here we thought for sure she had it broken.  She completed the first run in 7th place, but right before timer beeped for her to push her helmet fogged up and there was nothing she could do about it.  So she went down one of the most difficult tracks in the world "blind folded" and finished 9th overall.

The Cure:  This time she was bound to break that curse and finish anywhere better than 9th, but we definitely did not expect a podium finish!  Under rainy conditions she pulled it out and moved up from 4th place into 3rd place to claim the bronze!

Noelle has been on the podium on all 3 German tracks this year and she has beaten her Push Record on every track but this one, where she tied it.  Way to go Noelle!!!

Noelle came from behind in 4th place and moved up to claim Bronze to break "The Altenberg Curse"!  It was extremely wet.  The kids fell asleep in the stroller, where I had them covered up and bundled under a rain cover on the stroller.

Lacee made some new friends on the Canadian bobsled team.  You can see in the pic below, she is on the very end talking to Neville.  She also befriended Emily Baadsvik, who painted her nails in this picture above. Lacee went to her room to get her nails done the night before the race.  Emily brought her back 30 min later asleep in her arms with her nails all done.  Thanks Emily.

 The day we arrived lacee climbed onto this snowbank in front of our car and fell through.  It was so warm and rainy there, that by the end of the week this snow bank was down to 10 in tall.

 Noelle doing her sprint workouts in front of our hotel.  Noelle has a new sprint coach and he has built in some workouts that she can do on the go that are helping to maintain and increase her push leading up to World Championships.  Her training has been offset a little with a tweaked back and a strained hamstring.

 Noelle found a few walls on this track.  Something she has not done in a really, really long time.  Even I never hit the wall on my way down this track! :)  The trainer applied some of this tape to help heal the bruise.

 The top 6 on the podium with their "cream sodas".  There is always some lucky person around that gets a large free drink.  For some reason 2 of the 3 German tracks are sponsored largely by beer companies.  They also give out a large 1 gallon drum.  Crazy people!