24 février 2006

Barney Williams

While there may be many people terribly disappointed and depressed over the elimination of the men's hockey team, I am not one of them.

Watching Chandra Crawford's performance before Team Canada's loss on a grainy Internet feed on my laptop sent my mind racing. Back to my Olympic rowing final in 2004 and forward to what will hopefully be another in 2008.

I vividly remember the feeling of lining up next to Britain's coxless fours crew at 10 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 20, 2004, and thinking that the little town of Marathon, Greece, was the coolest place on the planet to be at that moment.

I was transported back to Marathon after the camera panned the competitors for the final of the women's cross-country sprint final and I saw Chandra's face. In her eyes was a passion that is a pure illustration of the spirit that separates the Olympics from every other sporting event in the world. She wanted to be on that start line more than anything else in life and was embracing the opportunity ahead of her. She was not intimidated by her opposition but rather seemed to relish the chance to race the very best.

Her performance sparked a phenomenal day for the Canadian Olympic team, aside from the hockey loss. This was not a coincidence. After watching Chandra's performance, which many of Canada's athletes would have done because the event was so early in the day, I was overwhelmed by feelings that I needed to get to the Beijing Olympics and throw down the hardest 200 strokes of my life. There was no fear, no hesitation. She was going for the gold right from the first shove of her poles.

When coaches and sports psychologists are looking to help our athletes who have come up just short in these Games, including skiers Francois Bourque and Kelly Vanderbeek, they need only show a few seconds of Chandra's facial expressions before and during the start of her race. Unlike Bourque's cautious approach to his second slalom run whilst positioned with a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be Olympic champion, Chandra exhibited the same aggression and fearlessness that allowed Benny Raich to charge from fifth to first in Bourque's race.

It would have been easy for her to look at the four-women final and say, "Wow, I am only 22 and if I race this smart and beat just one competitor I am guaranteed an Olympic medal." But she raced with the reckless abandon that defines champions.

I am training with Jake Wetzel, one of my teammates from Athens, and when we met hours after the race we immediately noticed each other's excitement. We had witnessed something special and we both knew it. We had got a feeling watching Chandra in the starting blocks that she was going to dominate. Training that afternoon for the 152nd Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race on April 2 was a blast because we were so inspired.

Next was Cindy Klassen's similarly dominant performance in speed skating's 1,500 metres. This was not the performance of an athlete looking to stand on the podium. Again stuck in front of a grainy online feed I watched Cindy destroy Anni Friesinger, one of the best speed skaters in the world. Klassen was more than two seconds faster than Friesinger, which in speed skating terms is huge. Clearly she was not racing just to beat Friesinger, who was considered her strongest opposition. Klassen, like Chandra Crawford, had prepared for this moment so well that her body was ready to deliver a superhuman performance. Duff Gibson and Jennifer Heil demonstrated similar qualities. Is it a coincidence they also won gold medals ?

These performances should be the model for our future Olympians. It is not about racing for a medal. It is about getting your body to deliver the best performance of your life at the Olympic Games, and then having the courage to go for it.

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