The Martlet

I spent a brief time as a higher-level athlete. I competed for the Yukon at the Canada Summer Games in cycling. I trained for four years leading up to the games. While everyone else was partying in high school, I was on a bike five to seven times a week.

In response to the March 4 article titled “Winter Olympics Games no ‘fair for all’” and its claim that the Winter Olympics were a joke because only 26 out of 82 countries brought home, I honestly don’t know what the author was thinking.

As you may know, Whitehorse has a good eight months of winter. Chances are, when not doing homework, I was on a bike in-doors, doing sprints. For a long time I did the athlete thing, which meant giving up having any pretense of a social life and never having a girlfriend. In the end, my dedication paid off and I qualified for the team and went to Regina to compete.

I’ll repeat that: I trained for four years to go to Regina. That’s not exactly an exotic locale. And, when I got there, my best result was around 36 out of 42.

What it comes down to is that I trained for four years to go to Regina and lost. I lost the mountain bike, the road race, the time trial and the criterium. I never even came close to obtaining a medal. Not once; not ever. And I had the time of my life.

It was a once in a life time experience and I would do it again in a heartbeat. I lost badly, but I never once felt bad about it. I raced and did my best against the best in Canada. It was awesome. The opportunity was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I consider myself so lucky just to have had the opportunity to do that. 

I met people from all over Canada. We truly are a diverse and wonderful people.

Now to put my experience in perspective: I was a guy from the Yukon who got to go to Regina just to lose, yet I consider the experience to be the perfect capstone on my athletic carrier. So much so, I actually feel complete. I don’t have

to bike any more — I made it.

Now, imagine you’re from any given country and you get to go to the Olympics. Imagine how amazing that must be.

Each athlete has already accomplished so much it’s ludicrous. People give up the best years of their life to have a shot at making a team which will be used to form a smaller team from which anywhere from four to 20 individuals will be selected.

Being an Olympian is a huge accomplishment — don’t diminish that by assuming the podium is where it’s at. 

Just because an Olympian doesn’t win a medal doesn’t mean they haven’t succeeded. They’ve accomplished something most people could not. 

They’ve completed a personal journey that has no analogue in most human experience. They’ve travelled to an amazing event and have met people from around the world. 

They’ve become ambassadors for their country and have brought the world just a little bit closer over something as simple as sport.

This is something we can easily forget. The media is focused on the medals; this is most likely because that’s what they can follow. To a certain extent that’s their job. But it’s not what the Olympics are truly about. Sure, only 26 of the 82 teams won medals. And the fraction of medal winners to athletes is even smaller.

Very few athletes ever win a medal at the Olympics. Most come in the middle of the pack. None of those athletes are losers in any way shape or form. None of their countries are losers in any sense of the word. Each individual is the best of what humanity has to offer to the world of athleticism.

I am also a cross country skier. In Whitehorse, we have a trail called “Olympic,” and every single Olympic athlete whom has ever lived in Whitehorse has a sign somewhere along that trail.

As far as I know, none of them ever won an Olympic medal either, but everyone single one of them is a hero by any standard.

You should never get hung up on something as simple as counting medals. You should get hung up on the fact that a good portion of the world got together for a brief period of time and made something wonderful happen.