It’s been the kind of week where nearly everybody has been focused on sports.
The 2014 Winter Olympics wrapping up Sunday, and Canadians from coast to coast have every reason to be proud of the third-place finish in the official rankings.
With 10 gold medals, Canada finished behind only Norway and Russia, countries whose athletes earned 11 and 13 gold medals respectively.
Of course, many Canadians put a higher emphasis on the two big events in the Bolshoy Ice Dome — the Canadian Women’s hockey team’s gut-wrenching 3-2 victory over the United States and the Canadian Men’s team’s 3-0 early-morning win over Sweden.
Regardless of the hockey wins the fact that Canadians earned 25 total medals, representing thousands of hours of training by hundreds of athletes, is incredibly inspiring.
The amount of perseverance and dedication it takes to fight for one more goal, one split-second faster, or one fancy trick better is what really impresses about these games.
The single-minded passion that athletes must possess to make it to the highest-profile winter sporting event the world has to offer is inspiring, to say the least.
But one need not look to Sochi to see excellence in sport. Over the past few weeks we’ve had plenty in the Westlock area to impress as well.
Westlock’s Senior Warriors battled to the finish last Saturday night in their match against the Devon Barons — the effort and passion put into that game was apparent to anyone watching it. And that’s just one example.
At the youth level, or beer league level, or casual community bonspiel we can see no less of that passion and potential. Provincial berths, gold medals from the Alberta Winter Games, and potential playoff runs abound.
At the ski hill, at community rinks, at the curling clubs, at the cross-country ski track on the golf course… at the end of the day people get out for the same reasons regardless of the level of competition.
No matter how good you are, you’re not going to make it anywhere unless you love what you’re doing — every second of it — and you work tirelessly to make it happen.
