Former Olympian offers golden advice to young athletes

Be the one in charge of your emotions and stay relaxed in all situations.

Those were the words Kathy Kreiner-Phillips shared with about 55 young girls on Wednesday. Kreiner-Phillips, an Olympic gold medal winning alpine skier, shared her story of pursuing her dreams of being the best at the Lakehead University High Performance girl’s basketball camp.

"If you don’t have the passion then it’s going to be hard to get to the top," Kreiner-Phillips said.

Kreiner-Phillips started skiing around the age of three with her older sister Laurie. It had become a family hobby with the two practising on the small hills in her hometown of Timmins, Ont. The two continued to push each other and that competition between sisters helped prepare Kreiner-Phillips for a career in alpine skiing.

"I wouldn’t have competed as young as I was without her," she said.

However, it wasn’t until Nancy Greene took home the gold in the 1968 Winter Olympics that Kreiner-Phillips said she wanted to achieve the same goal.

"I was really inspired by Nancy," she said. "I remember saying when I was 10 years old ‘wouldn’t that be great to win gold.’ It was a dream to be like Nancy."

Kreiner-Phillips joined the Canadian national team at the age of 13 years old. At 14 she competed in her first Winter Olympics, but her dream of winning gold was put on hold. Four years later she completed in the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria and defeated the favoured German, Rosi Mittermaier.

The young skier won the only gold medal for Canada at the ‘76 Winter Olympics and became the youngest gold medallist at the time.

Having achieved her goal, she competed in various races and eventually retired from her sport in 1981. She said she remembered advice a friend gave her about keeping her mind focused throughout a race and that sparked her interest as a sports psychologist.

"I like the variety of working with different sports," she said. "I found sports psychology really helpful in my performance and having attended a sports psychology conference I found the field really easy to relate to. It is more interesting to get more involved in what is on people’s minds."

Laura Cooper, 17, a recent graduate from St. Ignatius High School, attended the basketball camp and heard the story of how Kreiner-Phillips worked toward her goal.

"It was very inspiring," Cooper said. "It’s great to meet someone who has gone so far and to give tips on how they got there and try to follow in their footsteps."