SAC Mathew Bailey - Race Diary - 28 Jan 12

Luke on his way to coming 2nd RAF athlete

It was the 10k sprint day today a race a lot of the team had been looking forward to. The race start time wasn’t until 15.00 so we had a lot of time in the morning to chill and get ourselves ready for the race. We had a nice morning of watching TV sorting kit out and a nice lunch. Just before we left down to the stadium at 12.00 Coach dropped off our new race suits. They were pretty much the same as our last just the writing and a few bits stood out more. When we got down to the stadium we had a visitor from the UK, Mine luke Lukes Sqn OC (15 Sqn) had travelled out to see us and the team race. He popped into the wax cabin to have a chat and see how we were getting on before the race and was out on the tracks cheering us on during the race. At 14.00 we went over to the range to zero our rifles then we had a little warm up ski around ready for the start. I was the first to go today and at 15.04 I set off it was a hard first section of the course with a few big hills followed by a flatter section towards the end on my first shoot in prone I hit all my targets and was happy as I skied away from the range. Carl was next to go after me followed straight after by the Coach then Danny two people after with Luke and the Boss going towards the end. It was a physically hard race with some big hill climbs on the way around but as a team we all had a good race. The official results were posted quite late but all the team scoring athletes came in the top 50 which meant the team scored 6^th SAS cup team.