fabricflowers

You’re standing at the top of a three-tiered podium, wearing a tri-colored tracksuit, holding a bouquet of flowers with one arm and waving to a deafening crowd of ecstatic people with the other.Finally the moment you’ve been waiting for: you bend at the waist and a thick ribbon attached to a bright, shiny medallion is placed around your neck.For most of us, this dream is confined to our inner-thoughts and the screens of our television sets. But for a select group of athletes, the hope of attaining Olympic gold is a dream that well within reach.So, what separates the enthusiasts from the elites? We at The Express looked no further than our own backyard to find out.

When I was qualifying, I thought about two words London explained sailor Amanda Clark a Shelter Island native who will be competing in this summers London Olympic Games for the second time as part of Team Clarks first Olympic appearance was at the games in Beijing, where she and teammate Sarah Mergenthaler Chin placed 12th overall.At that point it had been about eight years of Olympic campaigning Clark said.So just qualifying was special in itself.

This year, after she and Mergenthaler Chin went their separate ways,Clark quickly teamed up with Floridian Sarah Lihan and went on to beat the favored team,once again finishing first in the Olympic trials this time with a tie-breaking win.

As you might expect, Clark said her love of sailing began at a young age. She learned how to sail at 5, joined the junior program at Shelter Island Yacht Club when she was 7, and by age 15 she became the youngest female sailor to qualify for the U.S. Olympic trials.Dita Von Teese out to Lunch in Vintage Glam