About a month ago I set up my TiVo to record FitTV's "Art of the Athlete" show after I saw a pretty cool episode about pro surfer Laird Hamilton (Gabby Reece's husband for those of you who know who she is). Well today I decided that taping that show is entirely worth it. While I was enjoying watching the Atlanta Braves beat the San Francisco Giants and also wondering if I'd see a Barry Bonds home run, the TiVo popped up its little message "TiVo needs to change the channel at 8:00 to tape "The Art of the Athlete". I was torn. Do I change from the game or not? Well I took a chance and much to my delight, the athlete featured was Jonny Moseley! The best moguls skier ever!!!!! I have been a huge Jonny fan ever since 1998 when I watched him win the moguls skiing event at the Nagano Olympic Games. Little 18-year-old Andrea had a big crush on Jonny and even made a Jonny Moseley website! haha Anyways, after he won the Olympics I wrote him a letter and he mailed me back a big 8x10 autographed glossy photo. Anytime I write to a celebrity or athlete and they take the time to write back, I'm instantly an even bigger fan. So anyways, it's great to see this Art of the Athlete special about him because despite what the public may think, he's not just a dumb "surfer dude" type of athlete. It's amazing to see the type of training that he did to get in shape for the Olympics, and also to hear his family and coaches talk about his hard work and dedication to the sport. At the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, Jonny was back with a big new move, "The Dinner Roll". He got fourth place and I was so disappointed because he definitely should have won. The dinner roll was a very controversial move because it broke all of the conventional rules of moguls skiing, and unfortunately for Jonny, the judges didn't necessarily like it that he pushed the system. Had he been more conservative in his jump there's no doubt he would have won. Alas, he didn't win, but what that jump did for his sport is great. Jonny is a true moguls pioneer and helped his sport achieve a new level when he did the dinner roll jump at the Olympics. Plus he was comfortable enough with his fourth place finish to go on Saturday Night Live and make fun of himself. I think this quote from his speech at the University of California-Berkeley's graduation ceremony sums it up perfectly, and it's a lesson that I hope I can learn to live by: "I'm not telling you to go for fourth place. But I encourage you, be free in the way you measure your success...Your ability to gauge your success will largely depend on how you perceive it. Your perception of this intangible ideal called success is something you CAN control." Basically, being "the best" or ranking number one in everything isn't necessarily "success". I try to teach my students this in class also. The physical letter grade they receive really doesn't matter. If they take something out of the class that they can use in the real world or they can remember and learn from for the rest of their life, that's success to me. Okay...I got off track with that a little!
Finally, I'll close with yet another reason that I will forever remain a Jonny Moseley fan: when Karl and I got married in December of 2006, we sent out about 100 wedding invitations to "celebrities" (mostly athletes!) just to see who would send back the response card. Jonny and his wife sent theirs back and wrote on it, "Good luck!" I liked that. Even though he's achieved a high level of fame, he's still down-to-earth enough to send back the response card for a wedding in which he doesn't know the bride or the groom. (Ha, I can only imagine what those celebrities said when they opened the invitation..."Andrea and Karl? Do we know them?")
Okay, enough about Jonny Moseley. If you see the FitTV special on, stop and watch it. It'll be worth your time.
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