Lake Placid’s Napier in 11th; Saranac Lake’s Frenette 32nd

John Napier has another day of heats today to improve his standing, though a comeback to reach the podium is a long shot. Here’s a statement released last night by the Bobsled Federation.

John Napier (Lake Placid, N.Y.) teamed with Steve Langton (Melrose, Mass.) as USA II to wrap up the first day of competition in 11th with a combined time of 1:44.73.

Team USA II powered off the block with identical start times of 4.89 seconds for runs of 52.28 and 52.45 seconds.

“I got a little nervous and made a few mistakes, but hopefully tomorrow I can make improvements,” said Napier. “There’s absolutely no way to prepare for the Olympic Games. There’s no way to explain it, to describe it. This is a kid’s dream and there’s no words I can use to describe it.”

Meanwhile, Saranac Lake’s Peter Frenette finished the ski jumping competition in 32nd place.

Here’s a clip from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

He had to wax his own skis and rip apart a few seams from his ski suit — the same ski suit he personally sewed a few weeks ago while training in Park City, Utah.

Such is life for cash-strapped U.S. ski jumpers, who are not funded by the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association.

“We’re the first athletes here every morning because we have to wax our own skis,” said Frenette, who turns 18 Wednesday. “Everyone else has people that do everything for them. It’d be a lot easier to focus on just our jumping than, ‘I’ve got to go there and wax my skis and make sure my suit’s legal and do all this stuff.'”

Frenette, considered the future of U.S. ski jumping, barely missed the cutoff to advance to the finals in the large hill ski jumping event Saturday. He finished 32nd out of 50 jumpers with a score of 90.6 after soaring 114 1/2 meters at a top speed of 92.2 kilometers per hour.

“Definitely regrets,” Frenette said. “There’s so many little things. You’re like, ‘OK, if I could have done that, I could have gone a couple meters farther.’ It’s kind of hard being that close because you know you can be in with the top-30.”

Tags: olympics