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“Our mission is to enhance the relationship between the University and its alumni and friends and promoted pride and commitment within the University Community.”This Olympian sets audacious goals
Silvia Ruegger, B.A.Sc. ’85 and BA ’87, competed in the first women’s Olympic marathon held in Los Angeles in1984. She was a 23-year-old student at the University of Guelph at the time, and the Olympic event was only her second time actually running a marathon.
This outstanding accomplishment was the result of a pledge she made to herself when she was 15 — a moment Ruegger remembers vividly.
It was 1976. She was watching the Olympic track-and-field competition in Montreal on her family’s tiny black and white television. Ruegger was so inspired by the competitors’ level of athletic excellence that before she went to bed that night, she ripped off a piece of paper from a notebook and wrote down her goal — to make it to the Olympics and win for Canada.
She took the scrap of paper, folded it and slid it between two floor boards in her bedroom. She covered the crack with masking tape and coloured the tape grey to match the floor. Then if that wasn’t enough, she pulled an area rug over top.
Ruegger wanted to keep her goal a secret in case she failed, but still kept the piece of paper as a commitment to herself.
She started training the next day. Growing up on a farm in Newtonville, a small community east of Toronto, she would spend her mornings before school running along the dark country roads. Her mother, not knowing what was motivating these early-morning runs, began following her in the car so Ruegger could run in the path of the headlights.
Ruegger’s consistent training started to pay off, and she began winning local races. She attracted the attention of a track coach who invited her to run with his team. In her final years of high school, she was winning provincial level competitions in the 1,500- and 3,000-metre track events. Adidas had even agreed to sponsor her, supplying her with shoes for training.
Upon graduation from high school, she was offered a number of scholarships to American universities, but Ruegger chose U of G. She wanted to stay in Canada, and Guelph had the academic program she was interested in. While studying applied human nutrition, Ruegger was also winning races at the Canadian Interuniversity Sports (CIS) national cross country championships. It seemed her goal of becoming an Olympian was within reach.
But all her success came to a halt when she injured her Achilles tendon. The injury was so severe Ruegger had to take the next two and a half years off running. Refusing to give up on her dream, she continued to train by running in the water at the University’s pool and pedalling on stationary bikes in the human kinetics department. She was finally diagnosed as needing foot orthotics, and only after she started wearing them was she able to run again.
“Even when I was injured, I never forgot about the note in floor. I thought if I could just hang in there, I could still make it happen,” says Ruegger.
It was 1983, and the next Olympic Games were only a year away.
When Ruegger found out the upcoming Olympics would be the first time women could compete in the marathon, she knew this was her chance. Her training in the water and on the bike had built up her cardiovascular endurance and strength.
She contacted a Toronto coach known for training marathoners and asked if he would coach her. There were only four months before Olympic trials, and Ruegger had never even run a marathon. Still the coach agreed to take her on. She began travelling by bus twice a week to Etobicoke to train after classes with Hugh Cameron and his team. On days when she stayed in Guelph, she would run long distances on her own, covering 200 kilometres a week.
Ruegger ran her first marathon in Ottawa; the race doubled as the Olympic marathon trials. She not only won the race, but qualified for the Olympics with a time of two hours and three minutes.
Next stop, the Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
It was hot and humid the day of the event. The race started at 8 a.m. Ruegger, who was the second-youngest runner in the field of 50 women, managed to stay with the front pack for the first stretch of the 42-kilometre run. She was running with four other women who were trailing the lead runner — a spot on the podium was within grasp.
But when the pack of runners hit the 34-kilometre mark, things suddenly changed. One of the runners in the group decided to pick up the pace to try and catch the lead runner, and the rest followed. As they pulled away, Ruegger struggled to keep up. The intensity of the race was taking its toll. The sun was beating down on her. She could feel the heat rising from the pavement, and the fatigue of dehydration was setting in.
“Everything inside of me was telling me to stop. It’s not just a physical battle, but a mental and emotional one too.”
Ruegger didn’t stop. She kept running, reaching the finish line in eighth place and setting a Canadian record.
“I missed out on a medal, but I can honestly say I had nothing left to give when I crossed that finish line.”
She went on to beat her own record six months later at her third marathon, a race held in Houston, Texas. That Canadian record still stands at two hours, 28 minutes and 36 seconds.
Despite her bounding success, Ruegger would never achieve her goal of winning an Olympic medal for Canada.
Two weeks after the January 1985 Houston marathon, she was in a serious car accident while on her way back to Guelph after training in Toronto. The crash took her out of training for two years. Although she managed to recover and get back into competitive shape, the rest of her career was plagued with injuries.
Ruegger made the Olympic team in 1988, but injuries kept her from going. Injuries also prevented her from trying out for the 1992 games. Finally in the spring of 1996, she decided to retire at the age of 35 – accepting that she would never realize her dream of winning an Olympic medal for her country.
“I spent 12 years pursuing a dream, and in the end, I didn’t achieve it,” says Ruegger. “But I have learned that the highest reward for a person’s work is not what he or she gets for it, but rather what he or she becomes by it.”
The whole journey Ruegger went through from committing to a goal and spending years working at achieving it is what led her to the next important path that she would take in life.
Shortly after retiring from competitive running, she befriended some children at her church in Scarborough. She noticed they would sometimes walk to service, even in the coldest days of winter, without warm clothing and wearing inadequate shoes. Ruegger started driving them to church. She got to know the children and their families and began to see how few opportunities these children had.
“I had always thought that if you set a goal and worked hard at it, you could accomplish anything, but that wasn’t the case for these children. Their opportunities were limited by the many obstacles that come with living in poverty.”
Writing a goal down on a piece of paper and then going about achieving it wasn't realistic for these children — a fact they would come to accept with age.
“The light in their eyes would go out, like watching a window being shut. They would look around at their circumstances and realize things weren’t going to be different for them. They started to believe that they didn’t have what it takes to succeed. I realized the light going out, the window shutting, was hope dying. It was devastating to watch.”
Ruegger felt compelled to change this. Meeting with Brian Warren, founder and CEO of the national children’s charity, Kidsfest, made change seem possible. The Kidsfest mission is to provide opportunities and bring resources to Canadian children living in poverty with the goal of breaking the cycle of generational poverty. Together, Ruegger and Warren formed a running and reading club in 2004 with Ruegger as the executive director.
The club is currently running in seven Canadian cities, including Guelph, and three First Nations communities. There are more than 900 children participating and hundreds of volunteers helping to run the weekly after-school program.
Students spend the first 45 minutes of the two-hour program doing physical activity such as circuit training, running and relays. The year-end goal is for all the children to complete a five-kilometre race.
“This allows them to gain confidence, measure their progress, expend energy and set a goal that enables them to see results in a short period of time. Achieving that goal changes their life. They realize they do have what it takes to succeed,” says Ruegger.
The children have a healthy snack and spend another 45 minutes improving their literacy skills. “Many times these children have developed a fear of books. Because they struggle with reading, they avoid books. With a volunteer helping and encouraging them, reading becomes a positive thing. As much as we are helping them to read, we are also helping them develop a love of reading,” she says.
Ruegger sees her role with the national charity as a much bigger accomplishment than her achievements as a runner.
“There is nothing more rewarding than watching these children – who could barely run for two minutes – finish a five-kilometre race. They get to see that it’s possible to have a goal and achieve it.”
Ruegger often shares her own Olympic experience with the children in hopes of inspiring them to set goals.
She even returned to her family’s home to retrieve the piece of paper she had kept hidden in the floor for nearly 25 years and now shows it when she gives talks at the Running and Reading Clubs. Although worn and yellowed, the piece of paper has been properly framed next to her Olympic running number.
“People sometimes ask me if I really think that offering a reading and running club will break the cycle of poverty, and I tell them ‘absolutely.’ It sounds audacious, but isn’t it also audacious to write a note stating you will one day become an Olympian, and then actually achieving it?”
By Deirdre Healey
Kidsfest
http://www.kidsfestonline.com/home
