antiquity
03-20-2002, 11:41 AM
U.S. Olympic Spirit Award Winners Named for the Paralympic Games
SALT LAKE CITY, March 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Sarah Will, veteran Alpine Paralympic skier and the entire U.S. sled hockey team were named U.S. Olympic Spirit Award winners in recognition of their courage and determination throughout the 2002 Paralympic Games. The U.S. Olympic Spirit Award, sponsored by Nu Skin acknowledges outstanding levels of courage, commitment, perseverance and vision in Olympic and Paralympic athletes in overcoming adversity to reach their goals.
Will, a four-time Paralympian swept the women's gold medals Saturday in the Alpine events. "It's a miracle today. We all fought pretty hard and it wasn't easy. It's a great way to end," says Sarah Will. Besides her athletic performances, her advocacy for the Paralympics movement has won her contemporaries' respect. Will is credited for recruiting names such as Muffy Davis and Sarah Billmeier to the sport.
Injured in 1988 in a ski accident that left her paralyzed from the waist down, Will refused to give up skiing and by 1992 was competing in her first Paralympics. Since then she has accumulated 12 gold medals and one silver.
No one could imagine that the men's sled hockey team stood a chance against proven winners Sweden and Norway, but their Cinderella story was every bit as magical as the 1980 Olympic hockey match between the United States and Russia. The U.S. sled team had been training with their new coach Rick Middleton for only seven months when the 2002 Games began and they were ranked dead last. Team members had traveled from different areas of the country, many times at personal cost and practiced at odd hours when they were able to get rink time in preparation for the Games, never losing their vision of what the team could be or the commitment to keep playing.
Sled fans watched in amazement as the U.S. team handed out defeat after defeat to seasoned competitors and advanced to the finals undefeated. They faced their greatest challenge after knocking Estonia out of the competition 6-1, to advance to the final match against the defending gold-medal team, Norway.
On the final day of Paralympic competition in front of an ecstatic sold-out crowd at the E-Center, the same facility where the Olympic hockey was played, the U.S. sled team hit the ice, tired and bruised from their match the previous day with Estonia, and did what neither the able-bodied men's or women's Olympic hockey teams were able to do -- they brought home the gold.
Nu Skin, a Utah-based personal care company and the award sponsor, is the only award sponsor to recognize Paralympian athletes. In the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, the award was presented to Marlon Shirley in track and field and Pam Fernandez, a blind tandem cyclist and her navigator, Al Whalen.
Nu Skin, the 2002 U.S. Olympic Spirit Award sponsor says they are supporting the award because its values closely parallel those of Nu Skin. "We want to measure our success by more than impressive sales figures and statistics, we want to judge ourselves on what we helped leave behind," says Sandie Tillotson, Senior Vice President of Nu Skin.
SALT LAKE CITY, March 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Sarah Will, veteran Alpine Paralympic skier and the entire U.S. sled hockey team were named U.S. Olympic Spirit Award winners in recognition of their courage and determination throughout the 2002 Paralympic Games. The U.S. Olympic Spirit Award, sponsored by Nu Skin acknowledges outstanding levels of courage, commitment, perseverance and vision in Olympic and Paralympic athletes in overcoming adversity to reach their goals.
Will, a four-time Paralympian swept the women's gold medals Saturday in the Alpine events. "It's a miracle today. We all fought pretty hard and it wasn't easy. It's a great way to end," says Sarah Will. Besides her athletic performances, her advocacy for the Paralympics movement has won her contemporaries' respect. Will is credited for recruiting names such as Muffy Davis and Sarah Billmeier to the sport.
Injured in 1988 in a ski accident that left her paralyzed from the waist down, Will refused to give up skiing and by 1992 was competing in her first Paralympics. Since then she has accumulated 12 gold medals and one silver.
No one could imagine that the men's sled hockey team stood a chance against proven winners Sweden and Norway, but their Cinderella story was every bit as magical as the 1980 Olympic hockey match between the United States and Russia. The U.S. sled team had been training with their new coach Rick Middleton for only seven months when the 2002 Games began and they were ranked dead last. Team members had traveled from different areas of the country, many times at personal cost and practiced at odd hours when they were able to get rink time in preparation for the Games, never losing their vision of what the team could be or the commitment to keep playing.
Sled fans watched in amazement as the U.S. team handed out defeat after defeat to seasoned competitors and advanced to the finals undefeated. They faced their greatest challenge after knocking Estonia out of the competition 6-1, to advance to the final match against the defending gold-medal team, Norway.
On the final day of Paralympic competition in front of an ecstatic sold-out crowd at the E-Center, the same facility where the Olympic hockey was played, the U.S. sled team hit the ice, tired and bruised from their match the previous day with Estonia, and did what neither the able-bodied men's or women's Olympic hockey teams were able to do -- they brought home the gold.
Nu Skin, a Utah-based personal care company and the award sponsor, is the only award sponsor to recognize Paralympian athletes. In the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, the award was presented to Marlon Shirley in track and field and Pam Fernandez, a blind tandem cyclist and her navigator, Al Whalen.
Nu Skin, the 2002 U.S. Olympic Spirit Award sponsor says they are supporting the award because its values closely parallel those of Nu Skin. "We want to measure our success by more than impressive sales figures and statistics, we want to judge ourselves on what we helped leave behind," says Sandie Tillotson, Senior Vice President of Nu Skin.