Английская Википедия:Andrew Blaser
Шаблон:Short description Шаблон:Infobox sportsperson Andrew Joseph Blaser (born May 8, 1989) is an American skeleton racer who competed at the 2022 Winter Olympics. He was previously a collegiate track and field athlete at Louisville and Idaho.
Early years
Blaser was born on May 8, 1989, in Boise, Idaho to Sherman and Ellen Blaser.[1] He was the youngest of four children in an athletic Mormon family,[2] and danced ballet in elementary school.[3] He attended Meridian High School in nearby Meridian, graduating in 2007.[4] In addition to playing football and basketball,[3] he was a three-time Class 5A state champion in track and field, winning back-to-back state titles in the 110m hurdles and tying for first in the 300m intermediate hurdles as a senior.[5] He also won five district titles and set a school record in the 110m hurdles.[1]
College track career
Blaser attended the University of Louisville as a freshman, setting a school record in the heptathlon.[6] He was planning to transfer to a junior college ahead of his sophomore year, but a friend of his convinced him to come to the University of Idaho instead, where he walked on to the track team and trained under sprint coach Angela Whyte.[7] Blaser went on the win six individual conference titles for the Vandals.[6] He was also honored with 10 outdoor All-Western Athletic Conference (WAC) honors and seven indoor All-WAC honors, both school records.[8]
At the 2010 WAC Indoor Championships, Blaser earned first-team all-WAC honors in the high jump after recording a career-best mark of 6 ft 6¾ in.[5] He was also a second-team all-WAC selection in three other events.[5] He suffered a back injury in a car accident soon afterward,[9] causing him to miss the 2010 outdoor and 2011 indoor seasons after undergoing hernia surgery.[5][10] Blaser made his return to competition during the 2011 outdoor season. He won his first conference title at the WAC Championships, scoring a career-high 7,037 points in the decathlon to take first place.[11] He set personal bests in six of the ten events en route to the fifth-best score in school history.[11] He also won the 110m hurdles event at the Sam Adams Classic and the Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational, qualifying for the NCAA Preliminaries for the first time in his career.[5]
As a senior in 2012, he led the Vandals to a conference title at the WAC Indoor Championships, where he scored a school-record 40 points and won the heptathlon, high jump, and 60-meter hurdles.[12] His score in the heptathlon (5,324) was the second-best mark in school history.[5] It was the school's first WAC title in any men's sport, and Blaser was named the WAC Men's Field Performer of the Year for his performance.[13] At the WAC Outdoor Championships, he set another school record with 44 points, winning the decathlon and 110 hurdles events while finishing third in four others.[12][14] He won seven of the ten events in the decathlon.[15] He also qualified for the NCAA Preliminaries in the 110m hurdles for the second year in a row.[5] At the end of the year Blaser was given the Joe Kearney Award as the conference's top male student-athlete, which he shared with Utah football player Robert Turpin.[8]
Skeleton career
Blaser spent his first year after college as an assistant coach on the Utah State track team.[10][12] While watching Cool Runnings, Blaser joked with his sister that he should try bobsledding.[4] He first called coaches in the spring of 2012 and attended a combine in Park City, Utah, but he was advised to switch to the similar sport of skeleton because of his lighter frame.[4][6][7] He made the move but soon grew frustrated and moved to Louisville, where he knew some people.[6] After eight months, he decided to give skeleton another chance, so he drove back to Utah, got a job as a waiter, and bought a new sled.[6]
Blaser debuted on the international circuit during the 2015–16 North American Cup season. He won his first medal, a silver, at a race in Park City in March 2016, finishing .07 seconds behind first place.[16] In 2017–18 he earned six medals (one silver and five bronze).[4] The following season, he won four gold medals in the North American Cup: two each in Park City and Lake Placid.[4] At the 2019 USA Skeleton National Team Trials, Blaser won all four races to win a spot on the 2019–20 Skeleton World Cup roster.[17] He finished 23rd and 22nd (out of 27) in his first two races, respectively.[12] Blaser placed 27th at the 2020 World Championships, suffering a concussion when he crashed.[7]
Blaser finished 2021 as the 28th-ranked racer in the IBSF standings and as the highest American earned a spot in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.[4] In January 2022, he was officially announced as a member of the American skeleton team at the Tokyo Games, marking the first time the U.S. delegation included a single male skeleton rider.[18] He finished in 21st place after three heats and missed the finals.[19]
Personal life
Blaser lives in Boise during the offseason, where he serves as an assistant coach for volleyball and track at Capital High School.[4] He also works through the Starbucks Elite Athlete Program.[4][7]
Blaser is openly gay. He came out to his family around 2014 or 2015, though he had been out among his friends for years.[2] In high school, he spent his lunches "with the theater kids instead of the athletes he competed with" and faced homophobic taunts from his peers.[2] He first talked to the media about his sexuality in a November 2021 interview with Outsports.[20] He was the first publicly gay man to compete in skeleton at the Olympic level,[21] competing with a rainbow saddle on his sled.[22] In the days leading up to the competition, he received a shoutout on Instagram from his favorite singer, Sara Bareilles.[23]
His brother, Sherm, won a state title as head football coach at Kuna High School in Kuna, Idaho.[12]
References
External links
- Andrew Blaser at IBSF
- Andrew Blaser at Team USA
- Шаблон:World Athletics
- ↑ 1,0 1,1 Шаблон:Cite web
- ↑ 2,0 2,1 2,2 Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ 3,0 3,1 Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ 4,0 4,1 4,2 4,3 4,4 4,5 4,6 4,7 Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ 5,0 5,1 5,2 5,3 5,4 5,5 5,6 Шаблон:Cite web
- ↑ 6,0 6,1 6,2 6,3 6,4 Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ 7,0 7,1 7,2 7,3 Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ 8,0 8,1 Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ Шаблон:Cite web
- ↑ 10,0 10,1 Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ 11,0 11,1 Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ 12,0 12,1 12,2 12,3 12,4 Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ Шаблон:Cite news
- ↑ Шаблон:Cite news
- Английская Википедия
- 1989 births
- American male skeleton racers
- Gay sportsmen
- Idaho Vandals men's track and field athletes
- LGBT skeleton racers
- American LGBT sportspeople
- LGBT people from Idaho
- Living people
- Louisville Cardinals men's track and field athletes
- Olympic skeleton racers for the United States
- People from Meridian, Idaho
- Skeleton racers at the 2022 Winter Olympics
- Sportspeople from Boise, Idaho
- Страницы, где используется шаблон "Навигационная таблица/Телепорт"
- Страницы с телепортом
- Википедия
- Статья из Википедии
- Статья из Английской Википедии