Shenanigans

Kathryn Bertine is an amazing cyclist that changed her citizenship just to get a ride to the Olympics in Beijing. She was ruled out by all of the main Olympic powers like the Untied States, Germany, and Russia because they already have strong teams. To look for a country that has the biggest potential in “hiring her,” she printed out a list of all countries and uses different colors to circle countries based on their size, if they are competing in the Olympics, if they somewhat share her ethnic background, for political reasons, and if they have room for more cyclists. After narrowing down the list, she had to contact each of them and see if they had any interest in her. While looking for a new home, she has to prepare for the Games as well as work with her new mentor and former Tour de France rider Chris Carmichael. After emailing as many countries as possible she hears from a small Island Nation called St. Kitts and Nevis who was very interested and after getting through all of the complications of becoming a citizen, is happy to have her on their Olympic team.

Talk about a request! What would you think if you got an email from a desperate athlete saying that she is willing to become a citizen in a country she has never heard of to go to the Olympics? Her determination to make it to the Games is an outstanding lesson for us all that through hard work and sacrifice, anything is possible. Hopefully she stays healthy and is able to do her best because it would be horrible to have her dream go down in flames. Good Luck Kathryn and do your new country proud.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 7:30 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.