Bahrke and her coffee are heading to Vancouver

by Peggy Shinn / January 22, 2010

Lying in bed in Lake Placid, N.Y., Shannon Bahrke couldn’t sleep on Wednesday night. On the eve of the final World Cup moguls competition before the 2010 Olympic team would be named, the 2002 Olympic silver medalist was a bundle of nerves.

A week earlier, she had scored a third at the World Cup in Deer Valley, Utah. It was her first World Cup podium since 2007. Would it be enough to land her on her third Olympic team?

While Hannah Kearney and Heather McPhie had already secured two of the four spots on the U.S. women’s Olympic mogul team, at least four women were fighting for the other two spots. Bahrke really needed another podium finish to seal the deal.

On a sunny warm(ish) day at Whiteface Mountain, Bahrke stood at the top for her run in the finals. Her legs felt tired, but she pushed that thought aside. “No!” she said to herself. “You’ve got to pep it up and feel good. You’ve got to do it, and you’ve got to do it well.”

She did it very well. She nailed both airs, made nary a bobble, and scored 24.96. Just a hair behind Kearney's 25.13 score, Bahrke would stand on the podium’s second step.

“It felt soooo good,” Bahrke said immediately after her run. “It was so crazy coming into today. To put down a run like that under pressure really means a lot.”

The women's Olympic mogul team won't be officially named until Tuesday. But with two podium finishes this season, Bahrke will no doubt be on the roster.

But Bahrke doesn’t just want to go to Vancouver for another shot at an Olympic medal. In the past few weeks, she was starting to wonder if her coffee could go to Vancouver without her.

Silver Bean Coffee, the company that she started with fiancé Matt Happe in 2008 and named after the silver medal she earned at the 2002 Olympics, will be served at the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association houses at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

“I’ve really got to make it there!” she thought in the weeks leading up to the Olympic mogul team nomination. “My coffee can’t go there without me!”

But if she wins a gold medal in Vancouver, will she have to rename her company?

 

Go back to Behind the Podium
   

Blog Description

Random thoughts, observations, and comments from behind the podium (and sometimes under it), as told by freelance writer, Peggy Shinn.

Blog RSS