When it comes to sports journalism, the stories about the winners are interesting but the stories about the tough losses can be even better. Those fascinating tales often chronicle individuals or teams that learn from their failures how to become future champions, often in unanticipated ways.
There are plenty of stories like that to tell in Prince George this week.
Prince George and Burns Lake are proud of Emily Dickson for her gold, silver and bronze medals so far in biathlon at the 2015 Canada Winter Games. Those are impressive accomplishments but look at how it happened. She took bronze on Sunday, silver on Tuesday and then the elusive gold on Wednesday. In other words, she was pleased Sunday but drove herself for more Tuesday to capture the silver. No doubt the 17-year-old strapped on her skis Wednesday afternoon with fire in her eyes and hunger in her belly for gold. Despite her success in her first two races, the competitor in her saw two missed opportunities for gold. She would not allow a third to pass her by.
For elite athletes, gold medals are great but there is always another race, another opportunity to be higher, faster, stronger and Dickson will no doubt use her accomplishments this week as fuel for future success.
It's a different story for Dickson's biathlon teammate, Arthur Roots of Prince George. Roots finished sixth, fourth and fifth in his three races so far, frustratingly close to the medal podium. The history of sports is littered with athletes who consistently made it to the border of the promised land but just couldn't cross over. The challenge for him will be to view his results in Prince George so far not as defeats but as steps leading to the future results (and victories) he desires and believes with all his heart he can attain.
From the results standpoint, Roots is so close. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the Patti Knezevic rink competing this week as Team B.C. at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, the national women's curling championship, in Moose Jaw. After coming close several times, Knezevic finally won her first B.C. title this year but now she's swimming with the sharks, competing with some of the best teams in the world, including Olympic gold medallist Jennifer Jones and the two-time defending Scotties champion Rachel Homan.
Jones welcomed the Knezevic rink to the Scotties by crushing them 11-2 and Homan was no less kind in an 8-3 victory. After a tough 8-7 loss to New Brunswick on Wednesday afternoon, the Knezevic crew has just one win and eight losses. They wrap up round-robin action tomorrow, playing the experienced Scotties veteran Heather Strong from Newfoundland and Labrador, followed by Mary-Anne Arsenault of Nova Scotia. Arsenault was having a pretty tough week herself but beat Homan and Jones on the same day Wednesday. Arsenault knows how to win as a five-time Canadian champion and two-time world champion when she was with the Colleen Jones rink.
The challenge for Knezevic waking up this morning in Moose Jaw will be to rally her team, put this terrible week behind them and put in two strong games to wrap up her Scotties debut. She and her young squad learned some hard lessons. What comes next season is up to them.
Yet they can find inspiration in the story of Ryan Shay, a member of Nova Scotia's wheelchair basketball team at the Games. Shay was one of his province's promising hockey prospects until a car accident ended that career but opened up his new athletic passion. Besides basketball, Shay, 20, is a wheelchair sprinter with hopes of competing for Canada at the Para PanAm Games in Toronto this summer and at the Paralympics next summer in Rio.
Shay didn't just lose a game. He lost his ability to walk but even that tragedy didn't dampen his spirit or his desire to compete.
The winners in sports get all of the attention and adoration but it's often the losing competitors, particularly when the losses are embarrassing or difficult to accept, that give us the best stories of all.
