Athletes grow up dreaming of those moments.
One of those moments happened today for alpine skier Dustin Cook.
Olympic gold medallist Kerrin Lee-Gartner tweeted today:
The bio on his website have these gems:
Best moment in ski racing: Coming through the finish line in the top 30 at Sölden last season. A breakthrough I’d been gunning for for a long time, and it felt so so good!
I guess he'll change that one!
Best World Cup stop: Beaver Creek is my personal favourite. Amazingly fun track, best snow anywhere in the world, and it’s in North America. Wengen is probably the most scenic and beautiful though.
Funniest thing you’ve seen in ski racing: Didn’t see it live but Bode Miller continuing to ski the track in Bormio, Italy, when his ski popped off 15 seconds into the world championship downhill in 2005. It’s something only Bode could pull off.
He may change that one to Bode's run today where he put his skis back on and skied down after a huge crash with a huge gash on his calf (turned out to be a torn tendon) or Kjetil Jansrud hitting the gate hard but still finishing to be just off the podium (thanks to Dustin).
You can read the full bio and great quotes here.
Dustin Cook is now officially a "Canadian Cowboy"...following in the footsteps of the Crazy Canucks.
I can't wait to see CDN Cowboys Racing profile updated to include Dustin!!
Sportsnet and CBC show most alpine races during the season, but they are normally tape delayed. CBC will livestream from the European time zones but it's rare that I get to see racing live (I'm a girl who needs her sleep).
With the World Championships in the US and most events televised, it's been great to see the races live. With that being said, NBC does have a very US-focused telecast. I don't have a problem with that. Canada is Canadian focused (showing all the Canadians in their telecast), Britain has a British focus, etc.
I was just catching up to the live telecast (having been late to start so watching it from PVR). As NBC is showing the American who will race soon, we hear the crowd cheering and finally the telecast goes to the last 10 seconds of Dustin Cook's run and he crosses the line in 2nd!! In amazing 2nd!!
Luckily, they went back to show the full run for our enjoyment.
A great article written by Kerry Gillespie was published in The Toronto Star.
There are often hugs and tears between athletes and loved ones when they finally get that spectacular result they’ve spent years striving toward.
But the embrace between Dustin Cook, Canada’s first-ever world championship super-G medallist, and his father was much more than about a simple victory.
Cook’s grandfather Bill, known as Papa, passed away two weeks ago from renal failure and his uncle Scott passed away last week from lymphoma.
“Dustin couldn’t go to their funerals, so this is pretty nice for them,” his father said in an interview with the Star. “My mom asked (Dustin) to do it for his Papa . . . so this is in their memory.”
You can click here to read the article.
When I launched OhCanada Sports, the first athlete post I shared was one by Dustin that he wrote at the end of 2014. Reading it again in hindsight is fascinating and shows how having the right mind-set can lead to better and better things. He wrote about the World Cup at Beaver Creek where the World Championships were going to be held. How often do we hear great results for people on "one of their favourite hills". The World Cup would only be the beginning for Dustin at Beaver Creek.
"I opted to skip the downhill in Beaver Creek to get a day of GS training and a day to recover instead. The SG at the Beav is one of my favourites. Super steep with tons of terrain on the top, jumps and terrain at the bottom, and always perfect Colorado snow. Starting 35 again I didn’t feel like I had that great of a run, with a couple mistakes and some soft skiing on the bottom pitch. I wouldn’t say I was more pumped seeing 12 on the board this time, but it was pretty close! It was great to confirm the result from Lake Louise, and to do it at my home away from home was pretty special. The next day I was 21st in the GS as well, making it two solid results on the World Championship hill!"
"Obviously I couldn’t be happier about my start to the season. I’ve known that I’m capable of results like this for a while, but it’s taken a lot longer than I wanted to get them! Thanks for all the kind words and congratulations, the amount of support I’ve received has been pretty amazing."
You can read the full blog post here.
As a fan, these are the moments we wait for as well.