Sport At Its Best

If you want to be successful, you should emulate successful people.  One of the main reasons why I started this blog was to present athletes that are very much worth emulating because they’re not just champions at their chosen sports, they’re also great people.  As I mentioned in the Origins section of this blog, living in Calgary has afforded me the opportunity to see first hand that many of the most successful athletes are that way at least in part because of values and/or attitudes about sport and about life.  This entry is about one very successful athlete who is also someone I would want my kids to emulate, let alone the athletes that I coach…

When I think about great sportsmanship and great champions, I think of a guy by the name of Gregor Staehli.  Gregor is a skeleton slider from Switzerland and to begin with, he is the most successful athlete in the history of the sport I competed in.  I think it’s important to mention his success as it may have played a role in terms of the attitude he has about competition.  He won his first World Championship medal in 1990 and won his first World Championships in 1994.  The year after winning bronze at the Torino Olympics, Gregor won his second World Championship gold medal on his home track in St. Moritz, Switzerland in what I assumed would be his last race.  However, after taking the 07/08 season off, Gregor returned to the World Cup circuit and claimed his third World title earlier this year.  In all, he has won a total of 8 World Championship medals as well as two Olympic medals.  I won’t try to guess how many World Cups he’s won over the years but you can assume it’s a lot.  Probably the single most impressive statistic about Gregor is the fact that if you averaged every one of his World Cup races over his entire career including his rookie year, he averaged a 4^th place finish!

Obviously he’s been tremendously successful in his career and Gregor had been sliding and winning for many years before I met him so I can’t say if his attitude developed over time or if it had always been the same but I do know this: when you’ve won that often and for that many years, what value does competition still hold for you?  What makes you keep training to get better?  Clearly the answer has nothing to do with winning yet another medal or trophy.  The answer, I believe, is the challenge.  And this is a very key concept – when you realize that the great joy of sport is in the challenge, then the better the competitors are, the greater the challenge, and the greater the reward if you are able to ultimately succeed.

“…when you realize that the great joy of sport is in the challenge, then the better the competitors are, the greater the challenge, and the greater the reward if you are able to ultimately succeed.”

Another way of expressing it is like this – if there was no challenge, if it was easy, there would be no reward.  How exciting would it be for a guy with Gregor’s resume to beat you because you had a bad day?  For him, is that something worth writing home about?  No.  When Gregor Staehli wished you luck, he truly wanted you to have your best race.  Then, if you did and he beat you, that meant something.  As a consequence, I can tell you first hand that it created a great atmosphere to both compete in and achieve your best in.  Competing against Gregor was an honor and pleasure, and on the few occasions that I was able to beat him, he was always very sincere in his congratulations.  I’d even say that after my first win at the World level, what made that experience even greater than it already was, was the support and sincere happiness that some of my competitors had for my success and Gregor was a big part of that.

“When Gregor Staehli wished you luck, he truly wanted you to have your best race.  Then, if you did and he beat you, that meant something.”

As the current World Champion and because of his success at the Whistler World Cup last year in which he won a silver medal, Gregor has to be considered a medal favourite for the Vancouver / Whistler Games coming up in February.  Of Course I’ll be hoping for some Canadian sliders to be on the podium but if Gregor found his way up there too, I’d be just as pleased for him as he was for me when I had my moment.