SONG OF JOY
Father who guided Hollingsworth there for final run
At one point at the Sanki Sliding Centre here Thursday night, they played an instrumental version of the Beatles’ classic All You Need is Love. It was so perfect. Olympic Games are about many things but the best is that they are so often about love, usually between parent and child.
I see it every night — some weeping mother, from Russia or China or the USA; some dad with spilling eyes and quivering mouth, and on the field of play, the great kids of the world’s nations, mouthing “I love you mum” in dozens of languages and blowing a kiss to the folks through the cameras.
This night the song was for Mellisa Hollingsworth and her dad, Darcy.
Her old man was there at the very end, for Mellisa’s last hurrah, as he had been there at the beginning.
As so many families do, Hollingsworth’s fractured when she was a kid, and at the age of eight, she moved in with Darcy, who was a saddle bronc rider in Eckville, Alta. “It had its challenges,” he said. “But all I ever wanted to be was a good father.”
He raised Mellisa on his own at first, and then he met his wife, Tammy, “who fit in perfectly” and became an integral part of Mellisa’s life.
Darcy was in the stands at the finishing line. He had on his black cowboy hat, which, after mulling it over, he’d decided to wear.
Hollingsworth had a great last run.
With her teammate Sarah Reid, they turned in the fastest times in the final heat of the competition.
It wasn’t good enough to make up for their earlier runs — the lowest cumulative time for all four heats determines the placings — but it moved Reid up to seventh and Hollingsworth from 16th to 11th.
Darcy gave her his hat, and for the lovely long time she had the lead and stayed in the area reserved for the leader, she wore it.
When Hollingsworth moved in with him, one of the requirements, he said, was that she did sports.
Darcy loves sports. “A kid can learn hard work and great things from sport,” he said. And she did.
“I was this quiet little insecure girl,” she said. “I tell all the kids, every school I go into, my worst grade in Grade 5 and 6 was physed, because I was so insecure and worried to make a mistake at anything that I thought, ‘ I’ll just sit on the sidelines.’
She was in Grade 10, a volleyball player, when he suggested she go to a skeleton camp.
“My dad’s like, ‘ You really need to go and do this,’ and three
‘ He’s been telling me we love you more than we could ever tell you. And I know that.’ MELLISA HOLLINGSWORTH Canadian skeleton athlete
months later, I won the Canadian championship. “It goes from there.” She failed to qualify for the Salt Lake Olympics in 2002, when women’s skeleton made its debut. She thinks, now, that had she made it, she would have participated and that likely would have been it for her.
When she didn’t, “it made me dig really, really deep.” She went on to win bronze in 2006. “And then we have the home Olympics { in Vancouver},” she said, “so of course you’re not going to just end your career because you did realize your Olympic dream of being on the podium.
“You’re gonna have the home Olympics and then, we all know what happened in Vancouver.”
In Vancouver, she ended up in fifth spot, tearfully apologized to the nation, and was inundated with kindness.
“It was Canada and my family that picked me up when I was down,” she said, “and made me brave enough to want to go on and come here ( to Sochi).
“And even though I don’t feel I raced to my best ability here, I don’t regret the four- year commitment because there were still two world championship medals and World Cup medals along the way, and pushing through times of injuries, and great victories.
“And to finally end it all on that last run, there’s no regrets.”
She retired from skeleton as the most decorated female athlete in the sport ever.
She lasted an astonishingly long time in a game where you hurtle down an icy track headfirst on a tiny sled at 130 klicks an hour, and where if the track is rough the sled, and athlete, are thrumming — 18 years.
Throughout this last season, Hollingsworth was trying to memorize it all, saying, “‘ Oh, this is going be the last time we’re in Whistler’ and ‘ This is going to be the last time we’re in St. Moritz and my teammates were getting really sick of me saying ‘ Oh this is the last time.’ ”
But when she got to Sochi, she was all business, focused, the way athletes get. Even so, she made sure, she said, to cut out a little time for herself.
As she put it, “I’ve been taking the time to say goodbye.”
The whole week Darcy has been in Sochi, she said, “He’s been telling me we love you more than we could ever tell you. And I know that.” “It’s time,” Darcy said. “I’m ready,” said Hollingsworth. A brave new world awaits, but as the song says, she has learned how to be her: All you need is love.