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Canadians love celebrating Olympic medal wins. But one of the most extraordinary moments of the winter Olympics this year surrounded an athlete who didn’t win a medal.
As you probably remember speed skater Gilmore Junio gave up his spot in the thousand-metre sprint to a teammate who went on to capture silver. Today he was thanked with a medal designed just for him — a medal from Canada.
It wasn’t the medal presentation Gilmore Junio dreamed of when he went to Sochi, and he almost didn’t want to accept it: “It’s crazy for myself to be given something for something I didn’t do.”
What he did do back in February, was give up his spot in the 1,000 metre speed skating race, to teammate Denny Morrison, who fell during the qualifying race. Morrison went on to win silver: “I sent a text message ‘are you ready for the 1000 m yea or nay’, and his first reply was who is this? His next few texts were, are you serious, I love you Gil, is this actually happening, and he came to the Canada Olympic House where I was with my family and we hugged. He was so excited, and I kinda felt cruel because I only gave him two days notice. “I always knew Denny was going to do better than I was going to do, but silver is like — I remember him crossing the line and I was like, oh no, what have we started.”
What started was a drive to award Junio for his kindness.
Mike Richardson: “A lot of us have young kids and we thought, that’s a role model.”
Mike Richardson and the rest of the Jacknife Design firm realized they could do something, and got to work on a unique medal design: “Maple wood to represent all of Canada, silver to represent Denny Morrison’s silver in the games, and then gold to represent our thank you and our appreciation to Gilmore. This is a medal from Canada.”
They crowdfunded to produce the medal, and decided to present it to the Olympian at a grade school in Kitchener. This school was right in the middle of kindness month when Junio made his sacrifice and the kids here were blown away by the story.
Chris Rhoda is with King Edward School: “The kids collected $161 at that assembly and we sent it off and now have our school name on the strap of a medal he’ll have forever.”
Gilmore said: “Why did I give up my spot? Because it gave Canada the best chance to win a medal.”
Mike said: “He’s like that reluctant hero. He knows he’s inspiring but he’s not boastful about it. That’s amazing.”
Gilmore said: “Hopefully, I can get an Olympic medal of my own someday, but this is a good start for sure.”
