I re-read a book yesterday entitled The Other Side of the Mountain which tells the story of Jill Kinmont, a champion skier during the 1950s. While practicing for Olympic tryouts, she crashed and severed her spinal cord, paralyzing herself from the neck down.
One of the wonderful things about the Internet is that if you read a book like that, you can jump online and find out what has happened since. So, I began researching the story after the story—what has happened to Jill since the book was written in the early 1970s. What I found out excited and humbled me.
Jill is now about 71, and seems as healthy as ever though of course, is still paralyzed. She is a painter and had a long career teaching children. She is married and is amazingly content with her life.
I really wanted to research Dave McCoy, Jill’s mentor and hero as a young skier. He was 35 at the time (my age), and was in the process of opening Mammoth Mountain in California as a ski resort. To get started, he sold a motorcycle for $85 to buy the first rope tow.
McCoy is portrayed in the story as hard worker but struggling financially, a man dedicated to mentoring young kids and family. He had at one time been a great skier but had broken his leg in about thirty places during a bad fall.
As it turns out, Dave McCoy’s investment in his young skier protégés and Mammoth Mountain paid off. In fact, McCoy groomed and coached 19 Olympic skiers over his career. As if that was not enough, he just sold Mammoth Mountain about two years ago for $365 million after building it to the third most popular ski destination in the country. At the age of 92, he is retired, but still going strong.
As I said earlier, I am humbled by this story. Dave McCoy represents what I want to be as an entrepreneur. He was passionate about what he did, focused on helping others, and extraordinarily successful.
I sat for a while contemplating the values that Dave McCoy and Jill Kinmont possess that made them so successful. Hard work was definitely part of it, but there is something else there too. I came to the conclusion that it is all about attitude. If you want to understand their attitude, you have to understand something about what it takes to be a champion skier.
Skiing is different than many sports in one huge way and if you ski very much, you will understand exactly what I am about to say. Professional skiers know that if they want to win, they have to push themselves to the very edge—within an eyelash of serious accident or even death. This is especially true in downhill racing—no sport that I know of requires more courage. A downhill skier fully in control and playing it safe has practically no chance of winning an Olympic race. They can win only by pushing themselves right to the edge of losing control.
As I look around at the people I know, I see people who largely play it safe. They are full of ideas but slow to pursue them because of the risk involved. They do not want to jeopardize their current lifestyle for a bigger payoff in the future. They would never make good downhill skiers. Don’t get me wrong—there is nothing wrong with this approach. However, that attitude is going to generate very different results in life than the attitude of a downhill skier.
So, Jill and Dave did not become successful in life because of their success as skiers. They became successful in life and skiing because of their fearless attitude. I greatly admire both of them. There is a lesson there to be learned by all of us. Don't let fear keep you from accomplishing all you can.
