As you know, I’m passing along my past GDHL duties to newer models that inevitably have more RAM and bigger hard drives. However, they haven’t yet locked out my password to the GDHL website, so I thought I would provide some details concerning the last 24 hours or so of GDHL history.
Those with a passing interest in professional sports will recall that Michael Jordan made the NBA championship-winning shot with 5.2 seconds left in his final game with the Chicago Bulls. Those with a more acute interest may know that Fabian Cancellara won the Olympic gold medal in the individual time trial in the final major race of his cycling career. Conversely, I mark my retirement (remembering that Michael Jordan retired three times) with the somewhat controlled chaos of an unprecedented number of last minute entrants into GDHL. From the time we “finalized” the teams and bib allocations on Friday evening until the start of Sunday afternoon’s race, we added 15 racers, changing the picture from being a bit light on registrations to having a few more than last year.
Of course, this was a real team effort, and couldn’t have been achieved without all those who were uncertain or uninformed, or simply succumbed to peer pressure and the lure of potential glory in our convivial GDHL environment. More seriously, we’re delighted to welcome all comers to GDHL, particularly those who are young enough that they may still be racing in GDHL 40 years from now. But we respectfully remind them that it’s cheaper to sign up in October, and you can be on a team and are more likely to get our great swag if you sign up before the last moment. Also, less stress will be inflicted upon our Race Office (notably Kylie Deacon) and our Coyote timing crew, both of whom it must be said passed the stress test in a way that would bring joy to the hearts of the occupants of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions.
So, a few final details:
Those wearing bibs 120 to 130 have been assigned to start out of numerical order. Most are latecomers, but Dave Raymond signed up in good time and was assigned number 84, only for us to find at the last moment that it is missing. Many of them are young females and are starting in the late 40’s. Most of the young male latecomers are very strong skiers and were simply given bibs at the back of the start order.
If you have friends or family among the newcomers to GDHL, please remind them to sign up for the newsletter at gdhl.org. We don’t take anyone off our distribution list, so if you’re not getting newsletters in the usual way, check your spam filter and/or sign up again. If you’re getting multiple copies of the newsletter, “unsubscribe” at the bottom of the one(s) you don’t want.
It takes a little effort to set up our database for the new season, and this can’t be done until the start list is finalized, which it now is. Results will be posted on gdhl.org in the Database found in the Results dropdown on the main menu. In the meantime, results are available on Live Timing, which can also be reached through the Results dropdown. Congratulations to Alec Libert, Gordon Bruce and Joel Charron as the top three overall and Mackenzie Irwin, Cheryl McConachie and Alex Kappele as the first three women. And compliments to your ranking committee, as there don’t seem to have been significant departures from expectations among the finishers.
The view from the timing hut - best seat in the house!
See you next weekend. Watch for news from Doug Jarvis on Thursday.
Cheers,
James Mathers