(WORDS OF OLYMPIANS)
(JUNGLE JIM HUNTER)
I grew up on a prairie, Saskatchewan farm
where it was flat as a table.
Then I went skiing.
I fell in love with the sport of skiing
when I was about 11.
I was at the awards banquet for the ski club I was in.
Nancy Greene, who had won a gold medal
and a silver medal in the '68 Olympics,
came to the banquet to present the trophies.
And I had never won a race. I mean, I was finishing 50th
and 60th and 90th.
I was not a good racer,
but I was trying as hard as I could
and working as hard as I could.
Most improved skier of the year,
Jim Hunter.
I walked to the front and I looked at Nancy Greene
and I just went, "Wow. What am I doing here?"
And then she did something which changed me forever.
She handed me the trophy and then she put her hands
on my face
and she was holding my face and she said,
"Do you think you could be a World Cup ski racer?"
I said, "Yes."
"Do you think you could be an Olympian?"
I said, "Yes."
"You think you could win a medal?"
I said, "Yes."
She just kinda grabbed me and looked right at me
as if she was looking through me and says,
"Then go do it. Go do it!"
From that moment on,
all I did was focus on being an Olympic athlete.
Becoming an Olympic skier where it's flat as a table,
how are you going to do that?
We live on the prairies, there are no hills.
I realised that no matter what I was doing
on the farm, that every job I did
was a way to become a best skier.
I could do pre-jumps on the seat of the tractor.
Jumping six feet in the air
in a crouch and then landing on the seat,
steering and then jumping again
and steering and jumping again and steering.
I used to count them. I could do 1,500 pre-jumps
in a mile. That's two kilometres.
All I did was train 14 hours a day
on the tractor.
And then I would stop
and I would imagine myself at the start of a race.
"I'm at the start of the Olympic games, OK.
"This is Innsbruck. OK, it's really steep. Steep.
"Get in your crouch. Hold your crouch."
And I would play this imaginary game.
In many ways, I became a ski racer thinking about it
and not actually skiing.
I went into that knowing that I had a chance
to be on the podium.
I had finished in the top three
in seven of the nine training runs
and I woke up the morning of the downhill, the first event,
really believing and with all my heart
knew that I had a chance to be on the podium.
If I did the right things, it would work.
Unfortunately, my games ended as quickly as they started.
I was taking my last warm up run on the training course
a German photographer was running across
the training course to get to the racecourse.
And I came over the jump and the coach standing
on the lip of the bump yelled,
"Hey! Look out!"
And the photographer stopped.
I just hit him.
And I cracked my ribs and ripped my downhill suit
and broke my skis.
And when I got up, my hands were shaking.
I remember standing in the starting gate
my hands are shaking like this, back and forth.
My baskets at the bottom are going like this
and the coach is looking at me going,
"I'm not letting you race." And I said,
"Scotty, I worked for four years,
"you're not stopping me."
He had to grab my poles and stop them from shaking.
And he shoved it into the snow.
I started and was terrified.
The adrenaline had gone through me.
Everything in me was just shaking.
I had to just try and hold on.
I ended up not finishing very well.
I finished tenth I believe.
The rest of the games were very difficult
to try and keep going.
Athletic people talk about the future.
They always talk about what they're going to do
or when they're going to do it
or how they're going to do it.
People that generally don't have that outlook in life
don't have a healthy outlook.
I wanted to go for one more Olympics,
but that didn't happen, so...
The potential in you to be your greatest
is determined by what you do when no-one watches.
I had the good fortune of being manager
of the Torch Relay for the Olympic games
in Calgary in 1988.
We tried to take the spirit of Olympism
to Canadians right across the country.
(HUNTER MANAGED THE 88-DAY OLYMPIC TORCH RELAY
(ACROSS CANADA TO THE OLYMPIC GAMES AT CALGARY, ALBERTA.)
(HE CURRENTLY PROVIDES DEVELOPMENTAL COACHING
(FOR ATHLETES IN CALGARY, CANADA.)