Читать книгу That's Great Advice - Matthew Pearlman - Страница 8

When Nikki Stone was ten, she wasn’t an aerial freestyle skiing champion, she was into gymnastics. She was good at it, too. By the time she was ten, she was competing in the state championship qualifier. After only three events, she found herself in first place. All she had to do was stick her balance beam routine so she would win.

Three-quarters of her way through her balance bar routine, Nikki slipped and fell. She saw her coach holding his head in his hands. Nikki got back up and finished, but realized she had lost so many points. She ran into the locker room and cried knowing that she wouldn’t go on to the state championships. Nikki told her friend that she was going to quit gymnastics. Her friend gave her a card that said “you mustn’t quit”. She listened to her friend’s advice and continued to train hard. The next year, Nikki did qualify for the state gymnastics championships.

This is just the beginning of Nikki’s amazing story. After excelling in gymnastics, Nikki went on to become the America’s first Olympic champion in inverted aerial skiing at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

After a chronic back injury that left her unable to stand or walk, Nikki fought back by remembering her gymnastics experience. Her perseverance earned her 35 World Cup podiums, eleven World Cup titles, four national titles and two Overall World Grand Prix titles in addition to the Olympic gold medal. Nikki also applied her drive to succeed to college, earning a Magna Cum Laude degree from Union College in New York, and a Summa Cum Laude Master’s Degree in Sports Psychology from the University of Utah, where she also taught as a visiting professor. Nikki earned these honors based on her college work (straight A’s). Today, Nikki travels worldwide as an inspirational speaker, ski host, and sports psychology consultant.

Nikki’s advice about perseverance for kids is:

“The biggest obstacle I overcame was my spinal injury. It is incredibly defeating when you can’t sit for more than 30 minutes, can’t stand for more than 15, and you have 10 doctors telling you to quit your sport and try to figure out something else to do with your life. I thought my lifelong dream could be over when I injured my spine. Then, I decided to prove all the doctors wrong, pushed through the pain to build the muscles in my back to support the injured disks, and returned to jumping 12 months later.”