Team Canada arrives in Moscow

First off my apologies for the delay in blogging. We are alive and well in the Hotel Cosmos in Moscow. It has taken me two days to get internet access but will be fine from now on.

The place is huge... After a very tiring day of travel it took us 2 hours in horrific traffic (others took four) to get to the host hotel, and then getting rooms and getting settled... Oh well we survived.

The hotel is immense looks nice and lavish on the outside. A little dated on the inside. Yet pretty cool... Have not hit the Karioke Bar yet but maybe soon (just kidding). The food has been adequate, I wont rave or anything. But I did get some good borsch which is kinda hard to come by in my neck of the woods.

Okay you are probably interested in the status of the team...

So far on the Women's team the first 5 weight classes have arrived (Huynh through Bouchard). We have had two short one hour mat sessions each day and I have been quite happy with the energy and mindset of the girls. The first day they took us to a training center that was pretty awesome. It had three floors of wrestling mats, weight rooms, gymnasiums, and the fourth floor actually had a museum dedicated to wrestling! The wrestling room we trained in had a large banner/mural for a the wall with four of the top russian wrestlers! Action shots of Satiev, Sajidov, Gatislov, and Manorova (I guess i am a bit of a wrestling geek for knowing them all). We brought a good stereo and thanks to Jessie we had an awesome practice grooving to the sounds of Justin Bieber, and Myley Cyrus! Haha

Today we went to the Tournament site for our training. The Warm up area had six international sized mats which was great. Again more great tunes thanks to Bondy (Macdonald)... The stadium is very impressive, very large! The practice today was good again, yet I could tell the time change was catching up with the girls a bit. Four of them were up at 3 or 4 in the morning, so by the time practice came at 10:30 they were ready for a nap! Happily, they shook off the cobwebs and got the job done. Jessie tried to break Todd's nose but other than that it was a good work out. The volume was pretty low but the intensity was dialed way up! I left practice again with a good feeling about where are girls are and how poised they appear ready to perform.

Last evening, a number of coaches and support staff took the metro down to red square. It was a bit of an adventure. Thank goodness Tamara Medwidski speaks Ukrainian and can read the Russian language. There was a celebration on called Moscow days and Red square was closed off to the public, but the whole area was buzzing with thousands of people. We walked around and took in the sites and the energy, there were street performers and a big outdoor concert. It was pretty interesting and a nice break away. This morning a few of the girls were not impressed that we had ventured out without them, so Coach Hinds and I headed back to the subway and took them down to check out the centre for themselves. Only one small detour (screw up) thanks to yours truely on the metro but more or less a nice afternoon.

This is my 14th trip to the Senior World Championships, every year I am always amazed by a few things that i forget in the time between World Championships. One is, if this was the "Line Budding World Championships" we would be in big trouble! Every year I forget how crazy it is doing simple things we usually take for granted! Our first morning our Women's team (Surprizingly prompt and on time for some reason) were the first froup waiting for pick up by the tournament busses to go to the training venue. Despite standing right at the curb we somehow didnt even make it on the first bus as is pulled up! All these polite gentlemen decided they needed to push there way on the bus first... Food lines pretty much the same, and when I was trying to check in at the hotel desk when we first arrived (oh my goodness). At times I feel like I need to be a zen master not to snap... but in the end we do always get what we need. And I am usually very impressed with the way our kids act at an event like this...
Okay, I know... real exciting stuff! Sorry for venting a bit. We are having fun too!

One thing I should mention was that EDMONTON was awarded the Senior Women's World Championships in 2012. As you probably know the London Olympics only has four women's Olympic Weights. Therefore Fila will be running a Women's Worlds following the Olympics which will include all seven weights. This will happen in Canada, and if past events are an indicator, the Edmonton group will do a great job! Congrats to them.

I will post again tomorrow.
Hope you are excited back home!!!
Coach Vierling