A labor intensive Labor Day

While families around the nation gather for end-of-summer barbeques on Labor Day Monday, U.S. ladies figure skating champion Rachael Flatt will be on the ice for yet another training session.
 
Flatt, who finished seventh at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, is on the ice for four sessions a day, plus some ballroom dancing sessions thrown in. The rink where Flatt trains is closed on just three holidays each year, and Labor Day isn’t one of them.
 
Day off? Not quite.

When asked if Labor Day would be business as usual, Flatt’s coach, Tom Zakrajsek, responded with a one-word email: Yes!
 
Flatt is less than two months away from her first international competition of the season, the NHK Trophy, to be held Oct. 22-24 in Nagoya, Japan. She will also compete in Skate America in November in Portland, Ore.
 
Flatt’s Labor Day training isn’t atypical.

For most U.S. Olympians and Olympic hopefuls, Labor Day will be another training day or a key date of competition.

A host of NBA stars, including Kevin Durant, Chauncey Billups and Lamar Odom, have given Team USA a 5-0 record in preliminary play at the FIBA World Championships in Turkey. On Labor Day, Team USA will play Angola. Team USA’s women’s basketball team, meanwhile, will be in the nation’s capital for a training camp to prepare for its world championships later this month in the Czech Republic.
 
Some athletes will mix in fun and family with the training, though, including Paralympic curler and U.S. Olympic Committee Team for Tomorrow athlete ambassador Augusto “Goose” Perez. And for good reason. In upstate New York, where Perez lives, Labor Day is one of the last days before his children begin the school year. So, he’ll train in the morning, then skip an afternoon workout so they can enjoy a family outing and go to a fireworks display.
 
“My family is really important to me,” said Perez, who drove 8,500 miles this summer with his family while training, competing and attending other events. “During the summer I take my family to train and compete as much as I can because it is hard to do during the winter.”
 
In addition to Flatt’s skating in Colorado and Perez’s training in New York, U.S. athletes will spend Labor Day around the globe. From Turkey to China to Japan to the tropics of Barbados, American athletes will spend the holiday training, competing and traveling. For example, Jimmy Pedro, coach of USA Judo’s national team and a former world champion, will spend the weekend in Hawaii at the wedding of 2006 judo Olympian Cliff Sunada. On Labor Day, after a night of travel, he’ll arrive in Tokyo for the Senior World Championships which begin Sept. 9.
 
Among the other busy U.S. teams and competitions on Labor Day:

• Cyclist Willow Koerber, who finished No. 2 in the World Cup standings, hopes to be coming home Monday to Durango, Colo., with a gold medal draped around her neck. She’ll compete this weekend in the 2010 UCI World Mountain Bike Championships in Mt. Ste. Anne, Quebec.“I’ll be flying home from Quebec,” she said. “And I’d like to have the gold medal and the rainbow jersey in my suitcase and feel a bit tired from the party the night before.”
•  Also hoping to be returning home with gold for Labor Day are U.S. all-around junior gymnastics champion Kyla Ross of Aliso Viejo, Calif., and five other women gymnasts competing this week in the Senior Pan American Championships in Guadalajara, Mexico. The individual finals are Monday. The U.S. men won gold earlier this week.
  
  
• 2008 Olympian Mary Beth Dunnichay is among 18 U.S. divers competing for gold in the FINA Junior Diving World Championships this weekend at the University of Arizona.
•  2008 Olympians Brady Ellison, Vic Wunderle and other USA Archery team members will be heading back home from China, where the fourth stage of the 2010 World Cup competition ends this weekend.
  
  
• The U.S. women’s boxing team will spend Labor Day traveling from Florida to Bridgetown, Barbados, for the 2010 Women’s World Championships. A week-long, pre-event training camp ends Sunday in Dania, Fla. The U.S. is looking to score its first gold medal in the World Championships since 2001, when Devonne Canady won the heavyweight title in the first-ever World Championships, held in Scranton, Pa.
  
  
• Five U.S. modern pentathlon athletes, including 2008 Olympians Sam Sacksen, Eli Bremer and Margaux Isaksen, will be in Chengdu, China, competing in the 50th Modern Pentathlon Senior World Championships.
  
  
• At the USA Baseball National Training Complex in Cary, N.C., the final day of the USA Baseball Labor Day Cup will be held Monday.
  
  
•  There will be little time off for the nation’s best team handball players. USA Team Handball’s training camp for the men’s national team concludes Monday at Thousand Oaks, Calif.
• Eddie Rodriguez, who was field manager for the 2009 Team USA World Cup baseball team, will be in Minnesota as third-base coach for the Kansas City Royals. For any former USA Baseball star now in the big leagues, Labor Day is just another workday in Major League Baseball.

Labor Day weekend also marks the end of summer, and hope for some athletes that  winter glory isn’t far away. For Paralympian Stephani Victor, that means skiing.
 
“Looking forward to the last warm days in California, where I sit in the sun and daydream about being on snow!” she wrote in an e-mail.
 
Her wait won’t be long. In just three weeks, the adaptive alpine team will conduct a week-long conditioning camp at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.

Alex Shibutani, an ice dancer who has hopes of competing at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games with his sister, Maia, lamented the fact that he won’t be on the ice on Monday.

“It is not up to us,’’ said Shibutani, who trains in Canton, Mich., “but our rink is closed!’’

Spoken like a true athlete.

Amy Rosewater and Peggy Shinn contributed to this story.

Story courtesy Red Line Editorial, Inc. Paul D. Bowker is a freelance contributor for teamusa.org. This story was not subject to the approval of any National Governing Bodies.