This week we were lucky enough to have one of the members of the 2012 Canadian Summer Olympic Team Monique Sullivan! Monique is a track cyclist who I go to know last year through the Ski Team training at the Velodrome in Calgary. She is an amazing athlete and a super cool girl with lots of great insight into her sport.
THANKS MONIQUE and GOOD LUCK AT THE OLYMPICS!!!!!!!
what I know now that I wish I knew then
I started riding bikes when I was a kid and I always loved racing around the neighborhood. When I was 12 I started cycling competitively and at first it just meant I got to do my favourite hobby every day after school with more people! I loved riding my bike and seeing how fast I could go. It was just FUN.
As I got older I did more competitions and my cycling focus changed from fun, to wanting to be the best. I am very competitive and I always wanted to win! Somewhere along the way this new focus took over and I forgot that bike riding is fun. I was trying to do everything perfect and soon I realized that riding bikes felt like a chore, I was always tired and I felt unhappy. There were times when I wanted to quit. But I had lots of people around me helping and they helped me remember why I love riding my bike and now I am grateful that I get to do it every day!
I wish I’d known then that working hard doesn’t mean you have to take away all the fun.
I wish I’d known that it takes time to become an expert at something and if you enjoy it you will be better.
I wish I’d known that other people’s success doesn’t take away from mine.
I wish I’d known to look around at the amazing opportunities. Doing sports is a privilege, and I wish I’d been more grateful.
I wish I’d taken longer to enjoy small victories, because those are the ones that really count.
I wish I’d known that making mistakes is how you learn and that as long as you are doing your best mistakes are inevitable and they lead to breakthroughs.
There are so many things I have left to learn; every day is an opportunity to learn something new, get better at something, or say thank you!
THANKS SO MUCH MONIQUE!! 🙂
Here’s a great article from the Globe and Mail about Monique’s path to the 2012 summer Olympics!
For the past year, track cyclist Monique Sullivan has been riding a roller coaster, trying to gain points here and there in the complex system to win an Olympic berth at the Games in London this summer.
At the next-to last Olympic qualifying event for track cyclists at the Pan American Championships in Mar del Plata, Argentina on Thursday, the Calgary athlete chalked up some big points, winning her second gold medal of the event, this time in the women’s keirin.
Earlier in the week, she won a women’s sprint gold medal.
The keirin is a sprint race, about two kilometres long, started by a pace vehicle such as a motorcycle, which leaves the track at about 50 kilometres an hour about 600 metres before the start of the race.
On Thursday, Sullivan faced a series of rain delays on the outdoor concrete velodrome and had to get to the gold the hard way: she had to race through repechage rounds. In the gold medal race, she edged Daniela Gaxiola of Mexico, while Jennifer Valente of the United States was third.
“This was a great test of mental focus with several rain delays and lots of unknowns,” Sullivan said after the race. “I have put a lot of effort into the mental side of racing and it paid off today.
“I had a simple race plan, I stayed focused and I executed a good ride.”
Canada is close in qualifying points to Venezuela for the final spot and the two countries will meet at the world championships in Australia next month.
“Can’t wait!” Sullivan said.
At the end of last year, at the Pan Am Championships in Medellin, Colombia, Sullivan was brilliant, qualifying first in the 200 metre time trial, setting a track record (11.37 seconds) and defeating former 500-metre time trial world champion Lisandra Guerra Rodriquez of Cuba for the first time.
It was a big step for Sullivan in the final Olympic qualifying event of the season. At that point, Sullivan would have qualified for the Olympics. But her path to the Games has been anything but smooth.
Her first World Cup of the season in Astana, Kazakhstan, was disappointing, marking her fifth Keirin in a row in which she finished 13th, missing qualifying by one spot. She knew if she didn’t make the second round in the next two World Cups, she wouldn’t qualify.
She went back to her winter training base in Los Angeles and delivered a sixth place finish in the sprint, her best result ever at a World Cup. She had conquered nerves, and then in the keirin conquered adversity, failing to get off to the start she wanted, but staying patient. She won two keirins in one day.
“I got goose bumps when I realized I had finally, finally got a keirin right,” she said on her blog.
Now that the track cycling portion of the championship is finished in Mar del Plata, Sullivan is finally beginning to realize a dream that started when she was an upstart teenager. At age 15, she was too young to compete in the youngest category – junior for 17 and 18-year-olds – and had to watch from the sidelines.
When she was 16, and still too young, coach Tanya Dubnicoff used “some strong words” to get race organizers to allow Sullivan into the junior event, but to be excluded from the medals.
Sullivan won the silver medal in the 500-metre time trial, but officials forgot to skip her name in the award ceremony and handed her the silver medal. Shortly afterwards, two commissaries tracked her down and took it away. She was crushed.
At age 23, she’s after bigger prizes now.
GOOD LUCK IN LONDON!!!!