It is today 25 years since the 5,000 meters speed skating race in the Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway.
13thFebruary 1994 people were ecstatic about Johann Olav Koss’s Olympic gold on the 5,000 metres distance. We were three Norwegian competitors and Kjell Storelid won the silver medal. A crowded and enthusiastic arena cheered me forwards, even though they could see I was racing rather poorly. I found it easy to keep spirits up and push myself to the limit, but I placed way down on the result board. The disappointment was massive. I knew that if I had raced as well as I did two weeks earlier, I would have had a fighting chance for the bronze medal. If I had, I might have kept on speed skating. Instead, I got the idea for something completely different. The idea of MOT was conceived because of that disappointment.
That’s life. ‘Who knows what is good and what is bad?’ It is easy to think that a situation is either good or bad, but that’s not how life works. One merges with the other.
Often, our disappointment becomes our appointment.