The parents of Champaign speedskater Katherine Reutter, Jay and Beth, will be checking in periodically during the Vancouver Olympics.

FRIDAY

Would like to say “wish you were here,” but we aren’t there yet!

Getting to the Vancouver Olympics has involved canceled flights and endless trips back and forth across the airport terminal in Seattle; so close, yet so far away — we’ve been stuck in Seattle for four hours now, even though the airline is claiming we never left St. Louis. Turns out the host family that is letting us stay with them in Vancouver for a week had an easy solution — to make the three- hour drive and get us to Vancouver.

Thank God for friends and kind people! 

I think this is a central theme that has made Katherine the success that she is. Many kind and giving folks in the C-U and St. Louis speedskating community have given countless hours to give our children a chance to be a big part of the world.

We have the Champaign Police Shop With A Cop program to thank for helping to fund Katherine’s training in Salt Lake City. We have a thousand friends from the Midwest who have provided  support and encouragement to Katherine along the way.  We have Procter & Gamble to thank for a $3,000 travel gift to Olympic families.

We have a lot of thanking to do — it illustrates how much we are connected together to truly accomplish great things.

I hope that Katherine will not disappoint her many benefactors; I can assure you that she will show a gargantuan effort on the ice, and I think you will approve.  We can only expect that she tries her hardest, and I know that her training and prep has been first rate.  

Watch her face as she races and I think you will see the intensity that she has learned from you all!   

 The Reutters