More Than Just The Gold

Just the second night of the Beijing Olympics and we've already had our first warm and fuzzy moment. Didn't take long, did it?
The comeback tale of Calgary gymnast Kyle Shewfelt has been well-documented heading into these Games. Less than a year ago, the 2004 Olympic gold medallist in floor exercise was stuck in a wheelchair after breaking both his legs at the '07 gymnastics worlds in Stuttgart, Germany. Beijing must have seemed like a pipe dream back then.
But there was Shewfelt last night, competing for Canada again. He finished 11th on the floor in men's qualifying, dashing his dreams of a repeat gold. A wasted effort? Not on your life.
"Those were giant victories," he told Olympic Prime host Ron MacLean in CBC's Olympic studio tonight. "I think it speaks much louder than a gold medal ... I did win in 2004. I lived the dream. But this was something just as special on a different level."
A young girl named Erica sure thought so. MacLean read her poignant, support e-mail to Shewfelt and the Canadian hero couldn't hold back the tears. An "Oprah moment," as Sherraine Schalm might call it (and she did back in Athens, come to think of it).
"I want to be a real athlete, I want to be a real leader," Shewfelt said after taking a few moments to compose himself. "Even when I don't win, people are still proud of me."
I've often heard — and you probably have, too — athletes talk about enjoying the journey and that moment on the Olympic stage. Shewfelt showed us how very real that is to so many of them. After watching a perfect landing on one of his vaults, he told MacLean "that's what the Olympics are all about. It doesn't get any better than that."
About his not-quite-good enough floor routine (well, at least according to the judges ... for the record, Shewfelt called one of his scores 'harsh.' His coach was, well, a little more harsh in his assessment): "I was proud of that routine. At the end of it, I felt like an Olympic champion again. After overcoming the injuries like I did, it was a great accomplishment."
Erica, and a whole bunch more Canadians, would heartily agree.
(a sampling of them you'll find right here).
*****
A little more perspective.
Canada's men's eights rowing crew, you may recall, entered the 2004 Athens Olympics as two-time world champions and heavily favoured to win gold. They wound up fifth in a stunning result that crushed the boys in the red maple leaf.
Now about half that crew is back for redemption in Beijing and, wouldn't you know it, they're world champs once again (apparently, this is a bad thing in men's eights. No reigning world champion has won this event since 1980, we were told).
How bad was the feeling in Athens?
One of those (not so) crazy eights, Kyle Hamilton, called it "the worst day of my life" during a The Olympians profile on CBC. But then he quickly added this.
"If that's the worst day of your life, you've had a pretty decent life."
We should all have it so good.