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www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Friday, March 13, 2015 | 8 Dreams made Olympians who they are today by Herb Garbutt Oakville Beaver Staff Silvia Ruegger didn't set out to be a marathon runner. Even after dedicating herself to being an Olympian, it hadn't even been a consideration. Inspired by the Montreal Olympics in 1976, she found a scrap of paper, dated it and wrote that she would one day run for Canada at the Olympics. And that she would win a medal. She slid it between a crack in floorboards in her bedroom, covered it with tape, which she coloured to match the floor, and pulled a rug over it. "I wanted to keep it to myself," Ruegger told the audience at the Appleby College Athletics Panel Presentation March 2. "It seemed so big." To that point her running experience consisted largely of chasing cows in from the field to the barn. The day after writing down her dream, she started training. Her mom, worried about her running early-morning training runs in the dark, started following her in the car, lighting her way with the headlights. Provincial titles in high school drew the attention of U.S. colleges, which offered Ruegger scholarships. She chose to stay in Canada, though, attending the University of Guelph, where she won a Canadian crosscountry title. An Achilles tendon injury threatened to Silvia Ruegger derail her Olympic dream. It prevented her from running for the next two-and-a-half years, but she continued to do what she could -- running in the pool and riding a stationary bike. By the time she was cleared to run again, the Olympics were a year way. She had always assumed she would compete in 1,500-metres, until then the longest distance for women. But upon learning the women's marathon had been added for the 1984 Olympics, she suddenly saw that all the work she had put in while injured could benefit her. "You can look at something as an obstacle Jesse Lumsden or an opportunity," Ruegger said. "How you see those will change everything. The year before hadn't been a lost season, it had perfectly prepared me for an endurance event." Ruegger's first marathon in Ottawa was the Olympic qualifier. She won. Later that year, she ran her second marathon at the Olympics in Los Angeles. The secondyoungest runner among the 50 in the field, she was in contention for a medal but couldn't keep pace with a group that made a break over the final eight kilometres. Ruegger finished eighth, but broke her own Canadian record she set in Ottawa. The following year in Houston, she broke her own record again, a mark that stood for the next 28 years. Each of the athletes on the panel on March 2 faced adversity during their career, but instead of treating it as a setback, they viewed it as a way to get better. Jennifer Botterill, who earned four Olympic medals during a decorated hockey career, saw the Canadian under-18 team as a natural stepping stone to making the Olympic team the following year. When she didn't make the Jennifer Botterill under-18 team, she didn't give up on the goal of making the Olympic team. "We always have a choice in the way we see a situation," she said. "Instead of dwelling on a negative, I came back with a new sense of resolve. I worked with a skating coach, a shooting coach." The next year, the 18-year-old Botterill made the Olympic team. And though Canada lost 3-1 to the United States in the gold-medal game, she would go on to help Canada win gold at the next three Olympics as well as five world championships between 1999 and 2007. "Every day we have an opportunity," she said. "Focus on that opportunity and see it as a great opportunity." For Jesse Lumsden, the football player turned Olympic bobsled crewman, that means dedicating years of work to improve by the tiniest of margins. "I spend 500 hours in the gym to improve push times by eight one-hundredths of a second," Lumsden said. 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