Small Business Today Magazine FEB 2015 TAYLOR CONSTRUCTION MANAGMENT | Page 30
EDITORIALFEATURE
Game Plans
for Success
By three-time Olympian, Ruben Gonzalez
E
veryone wants to win. Wanting to win is not
enough. You have to be willing to prepare to
win. No matter how many times I’ve been to
a particular luge track with my team mates,
before we train on it we “walk the track” with
Coach. A typical week during the Luge World
Cup Circuit is like this: Tuesday through Friday we
take our training and qualifying runs, Saturday and
Sunday we race, and Mondays are for traveling to
the next track.
Within Europe, we drive from track to track
in vans. For races outside of Europe, we fly. No
matter how long we have been traveling, no
matter how tired we are, whether we’ve just
ridden in a van for twelve hours from Innsbruck
to Sarajevo, or flown ten hours from Europe to
Calgary, before we go to the hotel - we walk the
track.
We start at the top of the track and for two
hours we literally walk down the track, slipping
and sliding the whole way, planning exactly what
lines we will take during training. Coach knows
the best lines – he was the World Champion
three times. Coach knows the shortcut to success. We follow Coach and take detailed notes
on everything he says.
Typically, it goes something like this: “Okay guys,
this is curve three. You want to enter early. At
this point, you want to be no more than three
inches from the left wall. Over here, steer with a
force of three (where zero is no steering and ten
is all you’ve got). Down there at the expansion
joint give it a five, over there by that sign hold it
up, then at the end - crank it with all you’ve got,
but remember to counter steer or else you’ll slam
into the wall!”
We feverishly write every word he says. Some
of us even tape Coach as he’s talking. When we
finally get to the hotel, we don’t go straight to bed;
we memorize the fastest lines and start visualizing
our perfect run.
28 SMALL BUSINESS TODAY MAGAZINE [ FEBRUARY 2015 ]
Within Europe, we drive
from track to track in vans.
For races outside of Europe,
we fly. No matter how
long we have been traveling,
no matter how tired we are,
whether we’ve just ridden in
a van for twelve hours from
Innsbruck to Sarajevo,
or flown ten hours from
Europe to Calgary, before
we go to the hotel - we
walk the track.
What if on the way to the track I had told
Coach, “Coach, I’m not feeling well, will you just
drop me off at the hotel?”
You know what would happen? I’d take a hot
shower, get a hot meal, snuggle under the warm
covers, watch “Friends” or “Frazier” on TV in Serbo-Croatian while sipping a hot chocolate, and
drift into a wonderful night’s sleep, all the while
thinking, “Those fools! They’re freezing their rear
ends out there!” And then the next day I’d kill myself on the track and have only myself to blame.
Wanting to win is not enough. You have to prepare to win. Winners do whatever it takes to get
to the ne ]