Hurdling Into Her Own Spotlight

We first met three years ago at a much more quaint venue in Ottawa and instantly, I thought, this is an athlete Canadians everywhere should want to see succeed.
Priscilla Lopes (she hadn't picked up the Schliep yet) didn't win that day at the Canadian track and field championships, held on the Terry Fox Athletic Facility track that sits on the banks of Mooney's Bay. But there was just something about her that said 'winner.' And something else that made a neutral observer want to see it happen someday on the biggest of stages.
Lopes-Schliep, as she's now known, was just that charming with an attitude and personality that were nothing less than infectious, it must be said now.
I thought about all of that again this morning while watching the powerful runner from Whitby, Ont., dance around the track at the Bird's Nest with glee after learning a photo finish had declared her the winner of the bronze medal in the women's 100-metre hurdles. It was Canada's first Olympic medal in track and field since the men's 4x100-metre relay team blew away the vaunted Americans on their home soil in Atlanta in 1996.
The last Canadian to earn a Games medal in the women's hurdles? Try Elizabeth Taylor (no, not that one), way back in 1936 in Berlin (yes, the infamous 'Nazi Olympics.' The race was only 80 metres long back then, by the way).
That streak was supposed to end four years ago in Athens but world champion Perdita Felicien, sadly and incredibly, didn't make it past the first hurdle. Just when she was beginning to return to form, an injury knocked Felicien out of the Beijing Games, apparently ending Canada's hopes for the hurdles again.
But not enough people, it seemed, knew about the competitive fire that burns inside of Lopes-Schliep. Give a listen to this quote from her Olympians profile on CBC. "If you say you're trying for second or third, pack your bags and go home," she said. "I'm going out there to win."
She's never believed for a minute, either, that she's been running in Felicien's shadow.
"I'm not living somebody else's dream," she said. "I'm living my dream."
Still, the ironies — and the connections to Felicien's fall in Athens — were too rich to ignore. One of the top medal contenders, world champion Andrea Kallur of Sweden (daughter of former New York Islanders hockey star Susanna, if you're wondering), suffered the same fate as Felicien in the heats (see, it doesn't just happen to our athletes).
In the final, the gold favourite, LoLo Jones of the U.S., seemed en route to victory when she clipped the second-last hurdle, killing her momentum. Lopes-Schliep, meanwhile, kept chugging away like the runaway freight train she is on the track.
And there she was at the end, out from "under the radar" and bouncing with pure joy to a step on the Olympic podium. Living her own dream, nobody else's. Tell me it didn't make you smile right along with her, Canada.