Dear Friends!
Greetings again from Jakarta. Yep, I'm still here, more or less in one piece! We have finally made our exit out of the tournament, losing to Korea earlier this evening. I think I mentioned before that we were set to play England tonight, but Korea made some foul moves and lost their tie against England on purpose, just so that they could be placed against us after the round-robin play was finished. It would have been great to have a better opportunity to progress further in the tournament by playing England, but in the end, I got to play another top 10 player tonight, which is what I can always use, though he crushed me tonight.As soon as I found out I was qualified for the Olympics, I began putting together my training plan with the expert guidance of my physiologist, Ken Brunet. I had a choice, delay my training for the Olympics by a few weeks in order to really peak for this event, or start my training immediately and get two extra weeks of hard training under my belt. I chose the extra two weeks of training and I have been paying for it! Though I am feeling very strong, I have had to really maximize my rest time in order to be able to do my training AND play my matches here in the tournament. Today I just didn't have any extra gas, and as a result, the crushing defeat....:) That's alright, it just goes with the circumstances of what I'm trying to do...Plus, my opponents will have their expectations lowered by the easy win, so that when I finally am peaking, they won't know what hit them!
Going back a bit, I was also able to play Lin Dan, world number 1, in yesterday's tie against China. I played him earlier in the year, at the Swiss Open, and got really crushed there. This time, it was a very even match for the most part; I scored 12 and 15 points in each set. Considering my fatigue was also quite high at this point, I was very pleased with the result.
The next few days here in Indonesia are looking great; I have lots of training and rest in store for me. I will also have a little bit more free time to explore this exotic city. I am looking forward to this part....
I'll be sure to get some intresting badminton memorabilia for those that are interested....
Take care and see you all soon!
Andrew
ANDREW ROBERT DABEKA
(c) 613.222.3302
www.AndrewDabeka.caPrevious emails:May 11, Apr 19, Apr 6, Mar 30, Mar 25, Mar 13, Mar 6, Feb 19, Jan 23, Jan 21, Dec 14, Nov 25, Nov 17, Nov 1, Oct 24, Oct 9, Sept 29, Sept 8, Sept 1, Aug 14, Jult 31 and July 10, 2007
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