Nothing scares me more than mediocrity. Over the course of the last 20 years I have experienced many highs and lows that are all too common in the world of high performance sport. From being there to watch two athletes & former roommates ascend the Olympic podium together to losing friends to the Olympic hangover. I am a firm believer that perception is the only difference between an obstacle & an opportunity, but sometimes people need the help of glasses. As the saying goes, we have all learned more from our mistakes than from our accomplishments, but nothing has taught me more about success & failure than the challenge of being a devoted husband & father. It has been a blessing to get the opportunity to serve as a mentor & coach to aspiring athletes from around the world, but there is nothing that can replace the role of a parent to a child. One time when I was working with an athlete from Québec at the Winter X Games, a reporter from ESPN asked me what I said to routinely get him on the podium. I let her know that we usually had the same conversation in the start gate, he would ask me "do you think I can..." to which I invariably would respond "yes" because he already knew that he could, he was just looking for confirmation. Like most people, I am drawn to what scares me. We are all forced to confront our fears in life, it is simply a question of how we are going to respond. The fear of failure is much worse than the act of failing & just like winning, you care a little less every time. Some people have claimed that I set expectations too high, but over the years it has been an invigorating process to watch others supersede their own expectations of what they thought was possible. Following the 2018 Winter Olympics I was approached with a daunting proposition to take 120 Chinese youth athletes who had never seen snow and transition them into Winter Olympians in three years. The fact that it did not seem possible was what drew me to the project along with the greatest coaching staff in the history of winter sports. As the Program Director I was given the green light put together the best group of coaches I could find & three months later I had hired six Head Coaches who had coached over 30 Olympic medalists. The program changed shape multiple times over the course of the next three years, but we ended up qualifying a dozen of those kids to the 2022 Winter Olympics. The challenge is exciting, the victory is the beginning of the next challenge. Nunc Coepi