Olympic dreaming

I love the Olympics. Always have. Probably always will. I love competition of most any type, and the Olympics – when the best athletes from across the globe come together to compete on the world’s stage in sports from popular to obscure – seem the epitome of competition.

Olympic dreaming in the mid-1980s

Yes, there are always distractions, especially so in this Sochi Olympics of unfinished hotels, political unrest, and the regular claims of corruption. But, for me at least, the Olympics are about the athletes who have dedicated more time than most of us will ever know to chasing their Olympic dreams. Here, we see athletic grace and grit, strength and stamina, a bit of luck and plenty of determination as they strive to realize the Olympic motto: faster, higher, stronger.

When I was a kid I dreamed of being in the Olympics. Probably a lot of kids involved in sports have similar dreams. I went as far as picking out a specific star on the American flag I would focus on as The Star-Spangled Banner played for my gold medal ceremony. I planned to sing along, and probably cry, too. I just wasn’t sure which sport to pursue to the Olympic level.

While my Olympic dreams are long gone, faded without realization or regret, I still love watching the Games. I enjoy hearing a few of the Olympians’ stories, watching some of them realize their own Olympic dreams, whether winning gold or simply being a part of the show. I still love to watch the competition and be inspired in my own meagre athletic endeavors to be a bit faster, higher, stronger.

As a young ski racer, I wanted to be fast like Tamara McKinney. When I started running track in high school, I adopted Carl Lewis’s manner of holding my hands stiff and straight while sprinting. I’m a total Olympic sap and have shed tears at many an Olympic moment – when Dan Jansen finally found gold in 1994, when Brandi Chastain scored the winning shootout goal in the inaugural gold medal game in women’s soccer in 1996, when Kerri Strug stuck her one-footed landing the same year. I’ve cheered for the Jamaican bobsled team and England’s lovable Eddie the Eagle and felt my own rush of adrenaline when Bode Miller nearly crashed, then miraculously recovered, in the downhill portion of the combined race in 2002.

That winter, 2002, was my first back in New England, and I was working both as a ski coach at Cannon and in the Franconia Sport Shop the year Bode won his first two Olympic medals. Reporters started showing up around town, trying to figure out who Bode Miller is by wandering around the place he grew up. I liked to mess with them a little when they came into the shop asking about Bode. “Bode who?” I’d reply. I didn’t know him any better than they did – I just loved to watch him ski. Still do.

It seems the whole town loves to watch Bode ski, to have a hometown Olympian to cheer on. Lucky for us, we’ve got a few 2014 Olympians in our region, including three who’ve honed their skills on Cannon Mountain: Bode in his fifth Olympics, Tyler Walker competing in his third Paralympics, and Julia Ford, a first-time Olympian who spent her final years before making the U.S. Ski Team training with the Holderness School and Franconia Ski Club on Cannon’s slopes. They join a long legacy of Cannon Olympians, stretching back to the earliest days of skiing on the mountain.

And let’s not forget 2013 Burke Mountain Academy graduate Mikaela Shiffrin, who had her first World Cup globe on the trophy shelf – and plenty of podium finishes – before graduating high school. She’s a Colorado girl by birth, but there will be plenty of ski racing fans around here cheering her on these Olympics.

It doesn’t seem to matter if folks personally know Bode or Tyler or Julia or Mikaela, we’re all rooting for the home hill Olympians. Banners go up on local businesses to show support and, sometimes – as the Games go on – relay congratulations. The news of their Olympic runs is shared at the Village Store and the post office, watched together at the bar or looked up on iPhones on the chairlift.

We love the good stories behind the other Olympians, from other mountains, even other countries. But there is something special to knowing where the guy or girl you’re rooting for comes from. There’s a thrill in making turns on the same trails they have, even if theirs were faster and en route to skiing greatness. And every now and then, if you watch the smallest skiers on the hill, you’ll catch a glimmer of a new Olympic dream taking shape.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the February 14, 2014 edition of the Littleton Record.