Clara Hughes is the only athlete in history to win multiple medals in both Summer and Winter Olympic games.

I realize how the lessons I learn on the skating oval help me navigate the highs and lows of being a human.

I believe magic in life happens when you follow the path, the bliss, that your heart tells you to follow.

The magic in my life began when I was a teenager. As an embarrassingly bored individual, slumped on the sofa mindlessly flipping through one uninteresting TV program after another, I happened upon the 1988 Winter Olympics. And there it was—long track speed skating! I sat up. My attention was drawn to the muscles bulging under the skin-tight suits as the athletes chased each other down lap after lap. They made skating look easy but I could sense they were suffering and focussing on giving all they had for the race. I embraced my first sporting hero after seeing a particularly gutsy performance by none other than Canadian speed skating legend Gaetan Boucher. If it was the Olympics that inspired these athletes to pour all their soul into these races, then I too wanted to experience the same. From that day on, I knew this is what I would do.

I wasted no time in beginning. And now, over half my life has been training and competing fulltime as a world-class athlete and Olympian. I have given skating my all. And of course I have learned that it is not as easy as Olympians make it look. In fact, it requires a degree of pain and suffering to skate well. Training most often involves working through enormous amounts of physical pain and long, lonely emotional battles just to make it through each day. And this doesn’t always guarantee success. Year after year I train and prepare for that one day, that one race every four years at the Olympics. You might ask with the risk of failure so great-and exposing yourself in front of millions of viewers-the chance of success so slim, what is it about sport that attracts me?

I admit, in times of doubt, I ask myself that question as well. I strive for perfection, but even if I’m as good as I can be it might not be fast enough. I can train all year but might not be healthy enough on a given day to perform at my potential. So, what lures me to go to the line time and again?

The answer is something called “bliss”. My bliss happens to be long track speed skating. Joseph Campbell’s writings tell us: “follow your bliss”. For me this meant to naturally follow my own path: to do the thing that brought me satisfaction, regardless of successes or failures.

And as my life takes twists and turns, just like my skating career, I realize how the lessons I learn on the skating oval help me navigate the highs and lows of being a human. You can pour your heart and soul into a race and still not win. Just like life. And when something is hard and causes physical or emotional pain there is usually a payoff..a lesson or maybe a reward.

I realize too that the good fortune of having found my path comes with a responsibility. I hope that I can influence maybe just one person, directionless as I was, to find and pursue their bliss. My life turned for the better that day back in 1988 when Gaetan Boucher inspired me. For me, sport is a metaphor for life. The magic happens when you learn life’s lessons along the way to pursuing your dream.

For This I Believe, I’m Clara Hughes in Calgary.