For months, Delaney Mewhirter has been waiting. Not idly, mind you, but waiting, sometimes patiently, sometimes not.
Waiting for her chance to compete.
In two weeks exactly, she’ll get her shot, at the Gstaad four-star, with the most unlikely of partners: Brooke Sweat.
It isn’t the partner Mewhirter expected to open the 2021 season with. That would have been Traci Callahan. For the previous six or so months, Mewhirter and Callahan have trained full-time, typically five days a week, sometimes six. Mewhirter hired a trainer; Callahan has been working with the legendary Mykel Jenkins.
They signed up for everything they could, from four-stars in Cancun to one-stars in Bulgaria.
They were shut out of all of them.
In a typical year, they’d have enough points to at least scrape into the qualifier of a one- or two-star. But this post-COVID season is certainly no typical year, and their points weren’t enough to squeak into any events.
Then came the most delightful of calls, from Sweat. With the Olympic race over, Sweat’s usual partner, Kerri Walsh Jennings, was taking a break. Sweat needed a partner for Gstaad.
Mewhirter is now that partner.
Alas, she will get her opportunity to compete, and in an event that is almost unanimously considered the best event on the World Tour schedule. Fellow Chasing Gold athletes Sarah Sponcil and Kelly Claes, Emily Stockman and Kelley Kolinske, Bill Kolinske, Casey Patterson, and Tri Bourne and Trevor Crabb will also be in Gstaad, which is the final four-star of the year.
One week after Gstaad, Callahan will also get her first chance to compete, at the Rwanda two-star. Like Mewhirter, she has been pulled in by a different partner than expected: Stockman, who has enough points to get them directly into the main draw.
It will have been seven months of training by then.
More than enough time to be fully prepared to compete.
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