SPORTS February 20, 2006 Issue

REAL OLYMPIC GLORY

Name removed by request

IN MY FIVE YEARS of serious training for the 2002 Winter Olympics, I never envisioned myself standing on the sidelines of the Games—let alone being happy about it.

But as much as I cherished my athletic goals during this time, I was also discovering that the most satisfying kind of victory was to get a deeper understanding of everyone's God-given ability to overcome physical limitation. And for me, the spirit of the Games became much broader than the Olympic motto Swifter, Higher, Stronger. It became a daily commitment to discovering more of the divine power and the freedom that power gives each of us—which was why I was thrilled to be in Utah, even as a spectator.

The crisp, sunny morning of the women's cross-country skiing 10 km pursuit race found me wedged in a deafening crowd lining the homestretch. Beckie Scott, a Canadian who up until the previous year hadn't been considered good enough to even warrant a "Good morning" from her fellow World Cup skiers, was battling for the bronze medal! Yelling who-knows-what at the top of our lungs, thousands of us fans urged her on to a photo-finish capture of the first-ever cross-country skiing medal for a North American woman.

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