World Champion of the World

 Not everyone can be a World Champion. After all, there’s only one world. And there’s a limited number of sports that can be contested on this earth. So that limits the number of possible world champions.

Nevertheless, we have a newly-crowned world champion on our UAA Ski Team. Derek Deuling spent a portion of this month racing World Cup races in Switzerland and competing at the Under-23 World Championships in Slovenia. And it was there that Derek, along with his Canadian teammates, won the world championship relay. 

I heard the news of Derek’s glorious success from Trond Flagstad, in our team condo, in Vail, Colorado, at around 4:40am. We three coaches were kind of bleary-eyed from a weekend of racing and a lack of sleep caused by getting up so early to drive to Denver for our flight back to Alaska after our most recent road trip.

Trond emerged from his room as I was stuffing ski boots into my duffle bag and trying to remember not to forget to fetch my jacket out of the closet or to look under my bed for any socks that might have ended up there, and his first words of the day were, “I think Canada just won the World Championship relay.”  It took a moment or two for that to sink in, and actually it wasn’t really sinking in, so I just said, “Oh… OK… Good”. I’m not much of a multi-tasker. When I’m doing one thing, I really can’t let any other things intrude and get in the way of my focus on that one thing, until that one thing is completed. So I kept focusing on packing my bags and remembering not to forget to pack anything, but the little voice in the back of my mind was telling me I should circle back to this World Championship news later, because if this news from Trond was true, then our Derek is a World Champion.

By and by, Tuva came downstairs and heard the news from Trond. She said, “Oh… wow!” But I think she was probably in the same state of mind as myself - almost as surprised that she was walking around the condo at 4:50am as she was to hear that the Canadians had won the U23 World Championship relay.

A few minutes later, as we were shoveling in a little breakfast and keeping an eye on the clock (because we were scheduled to be on the road with all aboard at 5:45am), Trond announced that the Canadians had definitely won the relay, and that it was raining in Planica, Slovenia.

Anyway, I guess my point in all this is to say that everyone’s World Championship experience is unique and personal. But most of all, I want to congratulate Derek Deuling and his Canadian teammates for becoming Under-23 World Champions!

Derek (and Beth)