Tommy Moe Essay, Research Paper

Tommy Moe, the legendary downhill skier, had rough road to walk in the beginning ofhis life and career but he found his way with no obstacle too big to stop him. He has beenthrough a great deal to find his way up to the top and that is why he is great candidate for apositive role model for todays youth or anyone for that matter. He has had many tough decisionsto make during his life and even though he may have chose a few wrong ones he was able tomake better of his life and impress the world. He was able to reinvent his life and take controlof what was his to make sure he was successful, and this is what make him such a role model foreveryday life in general. Without his determination and strong will to succeed he was able totransform his previously tainted reputation into one of a champion. Young skiers all over theworld strive to succeed the way he did and accomplish was he has and those young skiers andfeed off of that same determination and strong will he exhibits every time he lines up for the firstgate. His popularity has flourished in the past years and many think it was because he was ableto reinvent himself and take the skiing society by storm. He began as humble as any youth skierand as time went by he was able to find his way to the top. And this is where the story begins. Even though Moe was born in Anaconda, Montana, he live the majority of his life inAlaska. His father moved to Alaska because there were more construction jobs there, but beforehe left he taught young Tommy Moe how to ski. Says Tommy, ?I first remember snow plowingwith him at Big mountain when I was three, but I probably had been doing it even before then.? It was at this point in his life where he started to make the wrong decisions in life and hestarted to get off track. He thought to himself that if he was old enough to have a ski contract atthe young age of thirteen, then he was old enough to do grown up things. This is when he wasintroduced to marijuana and drinking. At this point Tom Sr. took young Tommy up to Alaska totry and straighten him out. It was in Alaska where he started racing again. The coachingseemed to tougher up there , probably because everything was actually harder up there. Beyondeveryone?s belief, the company Dynastar continued to support young Tommy despite hisproblem with experimenting. Tommy moved in with his father and he began to do well n the Alaskan circuit. At theage of fifteen he was invited to the National Alpine Championships at Copper Mountain,Colorado. He started at 69th and after he gouged through the rough downhill course he ended upin sixth place. He got serious about ski racing after this point and in 1987 the seventeen year oldTommy Moe took second in the downhill in the World Junior Championships in Norway. After continued success in the Junior circuit he decided to move up to the World Cupcircuit, which is where well known champions clash together in competition. It was here that hefound out there was much more to learn and find out about the sport as a whole, he rarelyfinished top ten. On top of his performances in the World Cup circuit, he did not finish too wellwith his rankings at 20th, 28th, and 18th in the 1992 winter Olympics in Albertville. After 1992says Tommy, ?I hit rock bottom. I was supposed to be the next superstar, but I was almost atotal burnout.? It was now where he decided to take charge of his career and take training intohis own hands, which included changing his strictly speed training and add more technicaltraining to his agenda. In the beginning of his new start he found rough time and he decided thathe needed to take some time off so he went back home and spent some time with his father. Until he decided to change his routine around his best World Cup rank was numbertwelve, but the first race after he finished twelfth and the score kept rising and with theOlympics in Lillehammer approaching things looked good. With a gold medal finish in thedownhill even tin the Olympics, he showed the world that he had what it took to be the best, hejust had to find it. Tommy Moe is not only an inspiration, role model, or hero for that matter he is all this toothers around the globe. His fans have even set up an ?Official? Tommy Moe home page on theInternet @ http://www.alaska.net/~tommymoe. The enthused fans have included in this websiteinformation like basic background information about him, a schedule of where he will be in thenext few months, a photo listing of Tommy Moe merchandise, a Tommy Moe newsletter, and asection where on e could sign up for the Tommy Moe fan club. This site is endorsed by TommyMoe himself and he is even willing to autograph the merchandise that could be purchased. There are some die hard fans out there that feel that he is the one, the true hero to skiracing and life for that matter. Their reasons for this may range from the fact that he had such ahard childhood and he managed to get on the right track, to the fact that the competition inprofessional ski racing almost got the best of him but he decided to take control and beat theodds. Or others just might look up to him simply because he a very talented ski racer that hasachieved a tremendous deal during his career like his five U.S. National Championship victories,the fact that he has competed in three Winter Olympics, or even how he was the first Americanmale to win two medals in the Winter Games. Despite all this, he is a very down to earth humanbeing and is there to help young racers out in their crucial beginnings, since he has retired andspent more time visiting ski camps. Tommy Moe is a perfect candidate for a person to look upto wouldn?t you say?