A great story that sticks the landing
Five years after Hamilton came to his aid, gymnast Wolfe Gazer realizes a dream
AS
HE STOOD at the end of the runway staring at the vault, he couldn’t prevent himself from thinking that if he could just land this double front tuck he could put an exclamation point on his career so far.
Stick this one landing, and he’d be off to Hungary to compete in the World Cup. Drill it and he’d be able to wear the Maple Leaf in a major world event for the first time.
More than anything, land upright after all that airborne spinning and twisting, and he’d be able to prove he’s been worthy of everyone’s help.
“Next thing I know I’m sitting on my butt in the landing area,” Wolfe Gazer says. “I misjudged my landing.”
This was not the ending he had in mind.
Then again, little has ever come easily for the 23-year-old from Hamilton.
When he was 17, his mom died of brain cancer. Around the same time, his dad suffered an aneurysm and a series of strokes. Suddenly, Gazer was on his own.
He’d go to school at Westmount secondary all day, travel by three buses to his Burlington gym to train for hours, take another three buses back to his job at a Hamilton fitness facility where he’d work until 1 a.m., head home to do homework until 2 or 3, and then finally flop into bed.
“These people who helped me were amazing. I literally wouldn’t be ... pursuing my dream if it wasn’t for them.” WOLFE GAZER
Then do it all over the next day. Through it all, he had to make enough to pay for his rent and food and bills and training.
“Sometimes I can’t train because I don’t have the fees,” he said back then. “It’s really hard.”
Five years ago, when his story first landed on the front page of The Spectator, people responded in remarkable ways. Dozens and dozens of folks donated to a GoFundMe page. An anonymous donor in Ancaster put up $6,000 to cover the cost of a full year of training. Others sent cheques and cash.
In all, close to $18,000 poured in. “These people who helped me were amazing,” he says. “I literally wouldn’t be ... pursuing my dream if it wasn’t for them.”
He would’ve quit?
“A hundred per cent,” he says.
But he didn’t. With enough cash now in his bank account to eat, train and quit at least one of his jobs, he kept going. Three years ago he moved to the University of Calgary to keep training.
In the years since, he’s had successes. He’s won medals — including some gold — at elite events. He’s been in the mix for Canada’s developmental team. He’s kept working despite ripped-up biceps, a busted hand, mangled fingers and blisters so numerous you’d need a calculator to keep track of them all. All the while never forgetting the people who helped him.
He now teaches kids at the gym where he trains. If one needs a ride home, he goes out of his way to offer it, even after being there for 14 hours or more almost every day. If there’s something else they need, he tries to do it.
“I feel I’m doing this even more now because of these people who impacted my life,” he says.
It’s a beautiful story of a young man trying to pay forward the incredible generosity that landed in his lap. Yet, the plot still had a huge hole. He still hadn’t reached his goal of competing for Canada on the world stage.
Which made the other day’s by-invitation-only World Cup qualifier in Montreal so key. If he could somehow eclipse the minimum qualifying score by combining a high degree of difficulty with a clean vault, he’d be on his way. Which is why it hurt so much to be sitting on his duff after the botched vault.
Funny thing, though. Sometimes good things really do happen to good people. Sometimes the stars align and the person you cheer for catches a break. Sometimes even a hard-luck gambler draws pocket aces.
Because, there was a second day of competition. He’d get another chance.
And on Sunday, it happened. He exploded out of a front handspring, launched off the vaulting table into that same gravity-taunting double front tuck ... and stuck it.
“I was overwhelmed with pride and happiness,” Gazer says. “Because this moment that I had landed on my feet had been in the works since I was 18.”
In a couple of weeks he’ll be receiving all his red and white Team Canada gear. He’s psyched about that. At the end of September, he’ll be jetting to Europe for the competition. He almost has no words for that.
Yet, he insists this isn’t about him. It’s about his coaches in Ontario and Calgary. It’s about his teammates. And it’s about the people who didn’t even know him who sent money so he could keep chasing a dream they didn’t know was desperately close to dying.
“These people have changed my life,” Gazer says. “As cliché as it sounds, they’ve changed the lives of people around me because they made me a different person.”