HERMOSA BEACH, California — After a dismal, 0-3 performance at the World Championships for Tri Bourne and Chaim Schalk, coupled with a fourth-place finish for USA rivals Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner, it wasn’t hard to guess what the brunt of questions on this week’s mailbag episode of SANDCAST would be centered around: Did Bourne regret his decision this past December to dump Crabb and pick up Schalk?
True enough, nearly half of the questions in our inbox revolved around on that very topic.
“Let me guess,” Bourne said, before I read him the first question, “do you regret your decision?”
He laughed.
But it was fair for the dozens (and dozens) of fans to wonder: Did he?
“No,” he said, leaning back. “I don’t.”
Then he thought for a moment before elaborating.
“I think the thing that people are missing is the why,” he added. “If you do things for the right reasons, then you have to back yourself through the highs and the lows. It’s so easy to look at Trevor playing well and say ‘He’d be playing well with you right now, you’d be in a better position.’ We were just in a place where I needed change. I don’t want to do this anymore the same way, whether it’s bored with it or I want to try new things, I wanted to try and go and take the next step, which is extremely hard to do when you’re at the top level. I hadn’t done that internationally, so I took that risk for the right reasons at the right time. I don’t regret the decision.
“In the future, I want to make decisions the same way. Just because it goes south doesn’t mean it’s the wrong thing to do. It’s a risk no matter what. It would have been a risk staying with Trev as well. But you definitely think about it when Trev’s doing good and you’re not, you’re like ‘damnnn.’ You don’t deny that from your head. You just wear those thoughts while you’re in your lows. For sure this has been the most frustrating, most difficult emotionally, mentally, even physically, just trying to figure it out knowing I put myself in this situation. It’s super difficult.”
At the moment, Bourne and Schalk are No. 20 in the Olympic rankings, four spots behind Crabb and Brunner, though even that gap is deceiving, as Bourne and Schalk have two more finishes to their total. Among the top four USA men’s teams in the race, they are the only team without a medal, and have yet to…
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