Alexandre Bilodeau won the first Canadian gold on Canadian soil for the Mogul on Saturday. There was a beautiful post-win clip on, where they interspliced him skiing with his special-needs brother watching him in the stands. That dude's bro was experiencing full-out, total joy, and it was so beautiful that it brought a tear to my eye.
Interestingly, when watching, I was specifically thinking about skier's knees - as many of you have commented on. My husband used to ski competitively, but he didn't stick with it very long, so his knees are okay. Unfortunately I never got to see him in a stretchy skier's outfit. His sister, who is 14 years younger than him and in highschool, is training intensely as a skier, and she does Alpine as well as moguls and all sorts of other skiing. She's currently aiming to compete in the 2014 games. She trains intensely through out the year, with a lot of dry land and swimming training in summer, along with trips to mountain destinations to ski even when it's warm. It's seriously time consuming and so expensive, but she really enjoys it and it's good to see a young lady developing strong self-esteem, regardless of the how's and why's. She has commented that her knees are going to be ruined, but then my knees are ruined for basically no reason, so at least she's got something amazing to blame for her future joint issues.