“I Cheer For Trying My Best”

There were two roses.

The flowers had found their way into Eric Pahima's hands after he skated at the Canada Winter Games in Prince George, BC. A small kindness. The kind that happens in rinks like this one.

They sat beside him on the kiss and cry bench, quiet and bright against the noise and energy of everything happening around them.

He was there with his teammate and new friend Matthew Lai, both from the Special Olympics Team BC. They had just competed. The scores were coming.

Neither of them cared about that.

Matthew noticed the roses, a look of envy across his face. Said something quietly, with a slight, almost inaudible wisp of sadness in his voice.

"I didn't get one of those."

There was no pause. No hesitation. Not from Eric.

Eric reached over and handed a rose to his friend.

"You can have one of mine."

Both faces broke into broad ear-to-ear grins. They hugged. Laughed. Around them people looked at each other. Some looked away.

Nobody was dry-eyed.

That was a decade ago.

This one has stayed with me.

Twenty years of covering sport teaches you things no classroom ever could.

It teaches you what pressure looks like on a human face. What sacrifice looks like from the inside. What it costs a person to dedicate their life to something and stand on the line and find out if it was enough.

I thought I had seen everything sport could show me.

Matthew Lai showed me I was wrong.

Sometimes the moments that stay with you longest don't come from where you expect.

Sometimes they come from a chilly rink in northern BC. From two young men and two roses. And five words that changed how I understand sport completely.

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I was there as Chief Sport Officer for figure skating at the Canada Winter Games, the first of two tenures in that role. Two of the most humbling experiences of my professional life.

I thought I understood what competition meant. What it felt like to want something badly enough to dedicate your life to it. What it looked like when an athlete left everything out there.

I thought I was there to tell his story. It turned out to be the other way around.

Matthew answered everything with the openness and warmth of someone who had absolutely nothing to hide and nothing to prove. Just a young man from the west coast who loved figure skating and loved competing and loved the friends he was making at these Games more than anything else about being here.

The medals, the scores? Didn't matter.

Then I asked him what competing meant to him.

He looked at me with the most open uncomplicated expression I have ever seen on an athlete's face.

He said five words I have never forgotten.

"I cheer for trying my best."

I felt my eyes welling up.

I wasn't alone.

I understood something in that moment. Something I hadn't fully understood before.

Not in all my years covering sport. Not in press boxes and media centres and scrums in three different countries.

The scoreboard was never the point.

Not for Matthew. Not that day.

Sport at its highest level is a business. I know that world intimately. Television contracts.

Sponsorship deals. Multi million-dollar deals. Rankings and results and the relentless machinery of performance measured against performance.

I've worked inside it for two decades. I know its value.

But sometimes sport strips all of that away.

Sometimes it gets back to the thing it was always supposed to be about before the cameras arrived and the contracts were signed and the pressure to win became the pressure to keep winning.

Matthew, Eric, and all those Special Olympians taught me that a decade ago. I've never, ever forgotten it.

They cheered for each other. They shared what they had without being asked. They competed with everything they had not for a ranking or a contract or a headline but because they loved sport.

And sport loved them back.

That exchange, raw and uncomplicated and unscripted, is the most honest version of competition I have ever witnessed.

In any arena. At any level. Anywhere.

---

When his performance ended that day Matthew skated off the ice with his arms raised to the sky. Wide open. Face up. Soaking in every single second of it. Not performing joy. Living it. The way only someone who competes purely for the love of competing ever really can.

He found Eric in the crowd. They embraced the way people do when they've shared something that words can't quite reach. Two young men from BC who arrived at these Games as strangers and were leaving best friends.

The scores came up eventually. A gold medal for Matthew. He didn't even really notice.

Later, during the medal ceremony, he held his prize briefly. Smiled for the cameras. Then put it in his bag.

He held on to that flower much longer.

Some things matter more than a medal or trophy. More than winning. Some things you carry with you not because they're heavy but because they're too valuable to put down.

Friendships forged in the most unlikely of places. Memories built not around podiums and results but around the simple brave act of showing up and giving everything you have.

Matthew Lai left with his friendships.

His memories.

And his flower.

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Marty Henwood covered sport across North America for over two decades including as Chief Sport Officer at two Canada Winter Games. He works with sport organizations to tell the stories that matter, because stories like Matthew's deserve to be told long after the scoreboards go dark.