Visually Impaired Alpine Skier lends his guide to teammate leading to Bronze medal for Canada at 2014 Paralympic Winter Games

While Chef de Mission of the Canadian Paralympic Team Ozzie Sawicki may have appeared calm on the outside, when I approached him just moments before our rookie alpine skier Mac Marcoux was set to race, he said that his heart was in his throat. Mac is a visually impaired skier and began to loose his sight at the age of 9. In just one month, he went from perfect vision to legally blind. While he will never go completely blind, his sight will continue to worsen over time. However, as Mac’s sight becomes less, his goal is to become faster. Already clocking times faster than 130km per hour at only 16 years old, we watched this first time Paralympian ski to the Bronze medal, and the first Canadian medal of these Games! Ozzie was just thrilled with the bronze medal performance. This will set an example for the other rookies on the team and there is no doubt in his mind that there will be many gold medal moments in this young stars future.

After the race I congratulated Mac and his guide Robin Femy (who skis down the hill in front of him and also communicates with Mac through radio communication) and they joked that the medal will need to be divided into 5, as they owe a lot of their race to their teammates. Robin was originally supposed to guide for another visually impaired skier Chris Williamson, and Mac’s brother BJ Marcoux was going to race with him. Unfortunately BJ had experienced a back injury just weeks before the games. Without hesitation Chris called up his former guide from 2010 Nick who was back in Canada. Within three days Nick flew out to meet up with the team. Chris would ski with Nick and Mac would ski with Robin. The last time Chris and Nick raced together was 4 years ago at the 2010 Winter Paralympic Games in Vancouver where they had two 4 place finishes.

Changing guides last minute is not something any skier wants to be dealing with leading into a Paralympic games, especially when the course is as difficult as the one in Sochi. The relationship between a skier and their guide is crucial as it is the role of the guide to help the visually impaired skier navigate the course. We have already seen many serious injuries resulting from crashes on this course, including an American skier being air lifted to the hospital. Robin attributed his knowledge and experience as a former alpine racer and a ski coach to his ability to work so well with Mac on such short notice. Coaching is something that runs in the family, Robin's father is the coach of the French Paralympic Alpine team.

Just as we saw in the Olympics with Speed Skater Gilmore Junio giving up his spot for teammate Denny Morrison, the men of the Canadian Paralympic Alpine Team are conducting themselves with the highest level of dignity and class by putting the Team ahead of themselves as individuals. Even though it was hard for BJ to not be physically in the race, he experienced every emotion with his brother throughout the entire race from the stands. As he told me he was loosing it as his brother crossed the finish line, tears filled my eyes and I was barely able to hold it together myself. Even though I watched multiple gold medal races, the love and support that these brothers and their teammates have for each other was by far the most inspiring thing I experienced today.