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USA DIVING NEWS |  |
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June 6, 2007 Where in the world is Team USA?
UPDATE: The team finally got to their hotel in Madrid at 1:05 a.m. Friday, May 8. The meet started at 9:30 a.m. that same day. ----- Not Madrid, that’s for sure. The next leg of the FINA Grand Prix stops in Spain for the June 8-10 Comunidad de Madrid, and the U.S. planned to send a team of 12 athletes, two coaches, a team leader and two medical staff members. The U.S. contingent was expected to leave Monday afternoon and arrive in Spain on Tuesday afternoon. As of Wednesday, however, only three members of the travel party have made it to Madrid. The other 14 still haven’t left the States and weren’t expected to do so until 9:50 p.m. Wednesday at the earliest. Weather problems across the Midwest on Monday caused a flight from Indianapolis to Washington, D.C., to be delayed about two hours. The bulk of the team was on that flight – Indiana University’s Cassandra Cardinell and Christina Loukas; Purdue’s Amanda Miller; David Boudia, Kelci Bryant, Mary Beth Dunnichay, Thomas Finchum, Haley Ishimatsu and coaches Wenbo Chen and John Wingfield of the Indianapolis-based National Training Center; medical staff Steven Zook and Matt Mrozinski; and Troy Dumais and Allison Brennan, who train in Austin, Texas, and Columbia, S.C, respectively, but were in Indiana for the Pan American Games selection camp. Once in D.C., they were supposed to meet up with Jevon Tarantino, Chris Colwill and team leader Dan Laak to catch their flight to Europe, but by the time the flight from Indianapolis was landing in Washington, D.C., the connecting flight had already closed its doors. It turned out that the flight to Brussels was delayed itself, but since the doors had been closed, the late-arrivals weren’t allowed on board. Thanks to messaging between parties on both flights, they were able to keep in contact and communicate back to the USA Diving office as well as to sponsor United Airlines. Bunny Moran and Mike Fitzpatrick of United’s Olympic Travel Desk were immediately on the phone to try to reaccomodate the team. Colwill, Laak and Tarantino made it Brussels, where they were supposed to go to Frankfurt and then Madrid. In Brussels, they were greeted by a United Airlines worker, who presented them with tickets directly to Madrid, allowing them to bypass Frankfort and end up in Spain about an hour and a half earlier than expected. If only the rest of the travel party were so lucky. Once it was determined the remaining 14 travelers couldn’t get out of D.C. on Monday, they got a hotel and planned to hop on a quick flight to Philadelphia on Tuesday and then take a direct flight to Madrid to arrive Wednesday afternoon. Problem: The flight to Philly was cancelled due to mechanical failures. Enter Plan C: Fly from D.C. to New York City on Tuesday night, bus to Newark, spend the night in New Jersey and fly out Wednesday night. Because the team had been cooped up in airports and hotels since Monday at noon, they made arrangements with Rutgers to get in an afternoon workout. As luck would have it, the team had problems getting out of the hotel as well. Someone at the hotel had had his tires slashed and in protest he had blocked the hotel’s only exit, causing a delay until the police arrived. After practice, the team is hopeful it will be getting on a plane from Newark to Frankfort at 9:50 p.m. From Frankfurt, they plan to catch a flight to Madrid. The estimated arrival time in Spain is now 11:45 p.m. Thursday, but it will be well into Friday morning by the time the team clears customs and gets to the hotel. The competition starts just hours later, with the men’s 3-meter preliminaries starting at 9:30 a.m. Friday, immediately followed by women’s 10-meter synchro. Colwill and Dumais were scheduled in the 3-meter event, with Ishimatsu and Dunnichay entered in the synchro. Following the Grand Prix event in Spain, the team will head over to Rome – via Frankfurt – for the Italian Grand Prix on June 15-17. The team has a direct flight from Rome to Washington, DC, on the return home. Comunidad de Madrid schedule Friday, June 8 Saturday, June 9 Sunday, June 10
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