The week prior to that, most of us were in Moscow for the Junior World Championships. Of course, only two of the skaters in our squad are actually juniors, the rest of us were basically there as “team support” otherwise known as tourists. I had run into some visa trouble prior to departing, the main problem being that I didn’t have one. You see, it ordinarily takes 6 working days to process a Russian visa, but since I had only returned from Canada 6 days previously (and only 4 working days) there was worry that I might not be able to get my visa in time. Add to that, the strange quirk that the Russian consulate was closed on international women’s day, and the fact that it took two hours (and almost 50 euros) each way for me to get there by train, I really only had two working days to play with. Luckily, everything worked out and I was able to travel to Moscow as a tourist team leader for Australia (and Sophie also tagged along, as the team’s medical person).

Touristing around Moscow was an interesting experience. Traveling is something that I do quite often but it is very rare that I get to experience a place that is as “foreign” as Moscow city is. First, there was the language. Prior to arriving in Moscow, I did not know any of the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet that weren’t obviously the same as those from the Latin alphabet. On the evening we arrived, I grabbed a few tourist maps of the city and began trying to teach myself the alphabet, if only to enable me to recognize train stations. By then end of our four-day trip, I was able to read Cyrillic (although not very quickly, and not with any understanding of what the words actually meant, though most were guessable). Trains in Moscow are pretty special. The Metro is the second most used in the world (behind Tokyo), trains run frequently, and the coverage is good. The stations themselves are magnificent. My darkroom website features a stitched panoramic shot of the Komsomolskaya station to give you an example of just how wonderful these places are.

We had a good day and a half of dedicated touristing during which we saw a lot of the city. We began with a bus tour just to get an initial familiarization with the sights and layout of the city. As it was low season (apparently, everyone comes in the summer time and not in the middle of winter) the bus was empty save for us, so even though we arrived late, and in the wrong location, the bus actually came around to pick us up. After the bus tour, we went walking and did a bit of museum-hopping as well as visiting Lenin’s tomb. Lenin’s tomb is an interesting sight because, despite dying in 1924, his body has been preserved (quite well, if slightly discoloured) in a tomb where anyone can come and visit.

St Basil's Cathedral at Red Square

Not only is Russian architecture very different to anything that I’m used to (a constant reminder that I’m in a foreign city) Russian history itself lends a strange backdrop to the experience of modern Moscow. In many ways, Moscow reminded me of Beijing, and the parallels don’t stop at comparisons of communist regimes. Both China and Russia experienced long histories of very powerful dynastic empires, “glory days” if you will, during which the respective countries were dominant world powers. Then the empires fell into decline, exacerbated by war, and were eventually overthrown. Now they are both growing and struggling with their image and identity in the world.

Here is a link to some of the photos from the trip.

Junior world championships went well, with a few Australian records falling (not just junior records either). We all seemed to enjoy ourselves and are very hopeful for the future of Australian speed skating. And now we come to the reason for the name of this blog entry – the future of Australian speed skating will most likely not include me. Obviously I will continue to skate (because I really enjoy it) but intense training and high-level competition are not for me anymore. I am also getting older, and my body is becoming less-suited to sports like speed skating, and more-suited to sports like curling, which I intend to take up. I also hope to continue my academic career a bit, and eventually get a job and save the world (though not necessarily in that order). Do not be alarmed – this is not the penultimate post of the website, but it is the penultimate post concerning speed skating.

Why penultimate? Because I expect to have one more.

Some of you may be aware already, but I’m currently in the process of shooting and then putting together a documentary about the journey of the Australian speed skating team from about October 2008 until now. This is a difficult process because, apart from all of the shooting that has to be done and interviews (all on a super tight budget), I will soon have to hit the editing suites and begin editing video and sound until this documentary feature comes together. Hopefully it will be of high enough quality to do justice to the extraordinary story of this group of skaters. If anyone out there knows anything about documentary film making or would like to help out, I would really appreciate any assistance (I’ve never done this before). Eventually I’d like to hit a few film festivals and then get this doco shown on Australian and Dutch TV, and maybe a few other countries depending on how successful it is. Hopefully I can get this all done before the next Olympic Games in Сочи (Sochi).

And finally, possibly the last Yeow News Network update to primarily feature speed skating. (This one is of a slightly comical nature) Enjoy!

Sophie Muir

Sophie Muir recently made history by not only becoming the first Australian long track skater in 16 years, but is also the first ever female long track olympic speed skater. We’re pretty proud of her. But it takes more than just a pretty face to get into the olympics. Literally thousands of hours of work must be endured to extract the kind of performances required to even get here. As part of my contribution to this team, aside from just being another training partner, I am occasionally called on to help motivate the members of our squad. To this end, I put together a short video for Sophie to watch just before her olympic debut. And now that she has safely completed all her events at this games, I have posted it to youtube so that the world can appreciate the heights of corniness I reach, just to help extract a good performance out of an athlete. The song that can be heard in the background is “Quietly” by Air Castles, and the last few lines of poetry are from the poem “We Are More” which was read out as part of the opening ceremony.

The moment the gun fires

Predictions for the first half of the speed skating competition.

(I would have had this up much earlier, but it took hours to render then even longer to upload)

This video was actually shot during our second ever game of ice hockey, which saw us improve dramatically over our first…

Reeeeaaaaaadddyyy...

Calgary

It is time for another update. After two weeks off without training because of my back, I am now slowly starting to get back into it. How slowly? I raced 5000m on Friday night at an average speed of 33km/h, THAT’S how slowly (that might sound fast, but it is not. The fast guys average in the low 50s). The North American regional qualifying event also took place last weekend. I’m not sure why, but Australia and New Zealand are included in the North American “region”. Oh well… I made a video about the weekend, and here it is:

After that, we took part in that most Canadian of pastimes – ice hockey. We weren’t very good, but it was a lot of fun.

Team Photo

Our first introduction is the Olympic Torch. It passed through Calgary a few days ago, and predictably made its way to the Calgary Olympic Oval. While there it was carried around the oval for a few laps by past Olympians and the Canadian long track team debuted their new suits. After all the fanfare, I caught up with Nicole Garrido who was able to give the low-down on the torch.

Our second introduction is the very talented Joshua Lose, who will likely be skating the 5000m for Australia in the upcoming Olympic Winter Games. This is sort of a “practice run” for the documentary I’m planning for the entire Australian long track program. Think of it as a teaser trailer for Josh’s story, which will be one of a handful of personal stories that will carry the narrative for the documentary.

Sunset on the 1st of January 2010

Apologies for the lack of updates. The main reason for this is because my trusty MacBook Pro stopped working two Mondays ago, just as I was leaving Holland for Canada. It turns out that it had a faulty logic board which had to be replaced. Luckily (yes, I’m going to pretend that all this was lucky) it is a known issue with MacBook Pro logic boards, so I didn’t have to pay anything for repairs. I was, however, without a computer for about ten days, which is an eternity for someone like me. I didn’t have a choice; the screen wasn’t working. There’s not much you can do with a computer lacking a working screen.

a cunningly-disguised cockroach spy tries to sneak past my plane, but I was able to identify it...

In the meantime, aside from reading books, I “raced” in the Canada Cup #1. I use the term in inverted commas because, owing to some atrocious delays in my transit between Holland and Canada, I didn’t arrive in Calgary until two days before the competition. The time difference is eight hours, and the altitude difference is about a thousand meters. Sitting around in airports for two days wasn’t exactly doing my back any favors, so I wasn’t in the best possible shape I could have been when it came time to race. So at the end of three days of competition, I had an injured back, and could hardly walk.

not bad for a hand-held 1-second exposure...

All was not lost however, for one, I finally got my computer back and was able to look at photos I had taken a week previously, including a few not-great attempts at photographing Aurora Borealis from the plane (the air route between Amsterdam and Calgary flies over the arctic). I also managed to obtain for myself a new video camera with which I hope to make an award-winning documentary about the birth of our Australian long track speed skating team. The camera itself is a JVC GY-HM100U which will mean nothing to you unless you keep track of HD video camera technology. The proof though, as they say, is in the pudding, and I took it upon myself to film what races I could of the Canada Cup and edit the material together for your viewing pleasure.

It is quite small, but produces video quality to match much larger (and more expensive) cameras

And the video itself… I need a bit of practice with shooting videos of skating.

If you have a fast internet connection, you can download and watch the original file in 1080p HD here (warning: it is a 967.5 megabyte mov file, and you need the XDCAM EX codec to play it – you should check if you have it – most people don’t have it).

So I’ve been here for a year.

I wanted to write a poem but, to the relief of followers of danielyeow.com, had severe writer’s block.

So, instead… I’ve put together the long-awaited second training video (which, btw, uploaded itself at a speed that would have shamed continental drift). Enjoy.

Today was the start of “zomerijs” (which you might have probably guessed to mean “summer ice” in Dutch) for our team. I didn’t expect much… I expected to be a bit rusty… yet I felt better than I’ve ever felt on the ice before. I was finding my edges, feeling good pressure in my pushes, and felt balanced. I have also prepared a teaser trailer for our next training video.

Enschede

Training for the Olympics isn’t easy. It isn’t cheap either. I made a short promotional video recently as part of our quest to find sponsors (it also gives a good introduction to what we’re doing), and here it is in all its glory:

(reclame is the Dutch word for advertisement)