Don’t fear failure, champ tells students
Gold-medal winner in bobsled at 2018 Winter Games pays visit to high school in his hometown
Hometown hero Justin Kripps says there actually wasn’t much going through his head in the final moments of his gold-medal bobsled run at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
“When I stood on that line, my heart was full and my head was clear because I felt like I’d already earned it. So when I went down the track I wasn’t thinking about anything. I was just letting it happen. I was reacting and I can trust my skills,” Kripps said during a visit Thursday to Summerland Secondary School.
Carrying the momentum around the last corner, there was not much left to do.
“I remember thinking to myself, ‘All right, that was a run. We were pretty much perfect, so there is nothing else I could have done. I’m going to be happy no matter what number comes up on the scoreboard,’” Kripps recalled.
He recounted the story to a school gym full of students during his short but sweet return to his hometown of Summerland.
He told the students not to be afraid of failure when pursuing their dreams, a lesson he learned when meeting prominent Canadians after his Olympic win, from the prime minister to astronauts.
“Failure is not the opposite of success, I’ve realized. Failure is the foundation on which success is built. That’s what these guys taught me, and that’s what I realized about my own journey is that it’s the failures that got me here,” he said.
Competing in more than 170 top-level races, he won 10 medals and 19 major championships.
“It’s not a great success rate,” Kripps said. “But the reason I was able to get those medals is all the time I spent trying, and eventually you finally succeed. “Don’t be afraid to fail.” Students were able to ask Kripps questions, which revealed he is a bit of a gamer, including his win record in the video game “Fortnite,” and the name of the bobsled in which he won the gold medal — Matador 64, a reference to another video game, “Destiny.”
Morgan Edwards of Summerland Middle School said it was exciting to watch a replay of Kripps’s gold-medal run with the man himself in the room.
“It was really good,” said the Grade 8 student. “It’s really inspirational.”