February 11, 2009 (PyeongChang, South Korea) – After over 24 hours of travel, I arrived in PyeongChang, South Korea three days ago. Traveling to Korea from Germany takes even longer than traveling from home to Central Europe. South Korea is an additional 8-hour time change from Central Europe and a 14-hour time change from the East Coast of the US. All in all, my trip to Korea was pretty smooth – I was able to sleep for most of the flight and all of my luggage arrived.

I am feeling pretty good here and am excited to get things started on Saturday with the sprint race. My Intensity sessions have gone well although I am not feeling quite 100% yet, but I doubt anyone is feeling so great after such a long travel.

The course here is extremely demanding with some of the biggest climbs and fastest downhills on the World Cup. Yesterday, I found out just how difficult this course is when I took a crash on the biggest downhill. Fortunately, I made it out with only a few scrapes but my rifle stock was not so lucky.

My stock broke in two and had to undergo emergency surgery last night. Luckily it was a pretty clean break and we were able to glue it back together quite easily. I was definitely not the only athlete to go down over the last few days and I have seen quite a few others walking around with serious snow cuts. After complaints from the all of the teams, the organizers have promised to make some changes to the downhill sections.