Shelley Rudman's biggest rival has revealed the inspiration behind her desire to build on her overall World Cup win.
Like Canada's first gold-medallist Alex Bilodeau, who has a brother, Frederic, with cerebral palsy, Mellisa Hollingsworth will be cheered on track-side by her cousin Tamielle Dryland, who also suffers from the condition.
Hollingsworth was quickest down the track in each of the first two skeleton training runs on Monday then revealed how the story behind Bilodeau's triumph had reminded her of her own fortune in the sport.
Hollingsworth said: "It was so inspiring to see Alex and Frederic and Alex was so right in what he said - when you have someone like that in your life you just have that different perspective.
"My cousin Tamielle Dryland has the exact same thing. Her attitude and how she lives life is so inspiring and it makes you check yourself and realise how lucky we are because we get to toboggan, really, for a living."
Meanwhile Hollingsworth insisted Bilodeau's success had eased some of the pressure on her own shoulders now that Canada's obsession with claiming a first gold medal on home ground had ended.
She added: "I don't have to worry about those questions now because we've won that first gold and Alex is definitely a huge ambassador for our team. But it hasn't really changed anything in terms of our game-plan."
No comments:
Post a Comment