Giving Back To The Future Athletes


12/18/2019

Olympic medallist mentors YOG Lausanne 2020 participants, as a gesture of giving back.


Dailycsr.com – 18 December 2019 – Jamie Greubel Poser is a winter Olympian, who has won bronze in the “Olympic Winter Games Sochi 2014” for her country America in bobsledding. Poser will be part of the “ARMs” team that will compete in the “Winter YOG Lausanne 2020” as a support to advice the “1,880 young athletes” participants.
 
She is thirty five years old, who has also bagged a bronze during the “2017 IBSF World Championships”. In October 2018, Poser retired to become “an elementary teacher in Germany”. Thinking about her journey with ARM programme and the young athletes, Poser said:
“I'm super excited. I am just really honoured to have the opportunity to get involved in the sport again. It has been such a big part of my life for the past decade. I'm teaching now and I love what I'm doing, but I'm really looking forward to staying connected to the sport and being able to give back to the next generation of athletes.”
 
After Poser retired, she wanted to keep in touch with the sports but she wasn’t sure as how to go about it. It is then that the opportunity to be a part of YOG came her way, which turned out to be the “perfect way” to get started. Teaching changed Poser’s life as she had to devote “a lot of time and attention”, yet she feels “really grateful for the opportunity”.
 
Poser also talked about the importance of sharing ones knowledge about the game. In her words:
“I think it's really important to share the knowledge that we have as "ARMs" with the younger generation because, in general, the sliding sports are challenging sports to find your way in and they require a lot of self-funding and coming up with your own resources. So I think sharing that sport-specific knowledge that we've gained through our experiences in the sport can be incredibly helpful for the younger athletes, who are just starting off in the sport. The more that we can share from our experiences, hopefully the less time it will take them to figure out the same information that we had to figure out over our years in the sport.”
 
Role models, adds Poser, is a very big motivation, for looking up to people was “pretty much the main reason” for her to pursue the sport. Poser said:
“At the very beginning, the first time that I went down the track, I thought I would never come back. It's a very intense sport; it's unlike any other sport that I ever competed in. But having role models and seeing the incredible women who competed in the sport, who made it fun, who lifted these heavy sleds and who woke up early and were out in the cold; they were just very impressive to me, and it gave me something to look up to and know that, ‘Hey, I can do this’.”
 
Giving a message to the young people preparing for Lausanne 2020, Poser added:
“I would say that they're incredibly lucky to have this opportunity, and that going to these Games will be incredibly inspiring. I would just tell them to enjoy every minute and every moment, and just take it all in. Be confident in their preparation and enjoy the competition. They shouldn’t do anything differently in their preparation just because the YOG are coming up; they just need to do everything that they have always been doing to prepare. At the end of the day, they know their sport and they just need to stick to their routine and be confident in their routine. If they do that, then they’re going to be great.”
 
 
References:
3blmedia.com