Rusty Smith, a 22-year-old on the National short track speed skating team that is based at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., is sharing a weekly diary during the World Cup season on his preparations for the Olympic team.

In the past week, we've been getting ready for the first World Cup of the season in Calgary, Canada. We've slowed our training down to make it a little more specific to get us ready for racing, so we would be a little more rested, refreshed and able to skate faster when we arrived in Calgary.

	RUSTY SMITH
	Smith Age: 22 Hometown: Sunset Beach, Calif. Sport: Short track speed skating Accomplishments: In the 1998 Olympics, he was 13th in the 1,000 and a member of the 6th-place relay team. At the 2000 Worlds, he placed fourth in the 1,000 meter, seventh in the 500 meter and eighth overall.

The training's been going well, but an eventful trip kept us from being as rested once we arrived.

Most of our team had left for a different competition, so there was only two of us training last week. We got more specific training with our coach and were actually working out a little bit harder. The weekend was fairly relaxing as we just packed everything up and got ready to start traveling.

Because of the new travel restrictions, we got new suitcases so we could put our skates under the plane rather than carry them on. We were getting ready to leave for our noon flight on Monday when we got a phone call from our National Governing Body telling us our flight was canceled. So we turned around and went to practice. After practice we got another call telling us we'd be on the 7 p.m. flight that wouldn't arrive in Calgary until midnight. To make it even better, we had to skate at 8 a.m. the next day.

We got into Calgary - through all the airports - and everything seemed fine. We went through customs and then went to pick up our luggage. That's when we realized that there was police banner tape up all through the airport in the area where we're standing to get our luggage. There were ambulances and police - everything there.

While we standing there waiting - which took an awful, awful long time - with the police standing around, we noticed three or four people in full white hazardous material outfits walking through. Two minutes later, there was a Middle Eastern gentleman walking out in handcuffs wearing a white suit, too. One of the police officers told us that he had some unidentified white powder on him.

It took us 45 minutes to get our bags. But it was even more fun waking up at 7 a.m. Tuesday morning to go skating. It makes for a funny travel experience because it seems every time you go to an airport something goes wrong.