学进去

It was the Olympic Games in Barcelona in 1992; the semi-final of the 400 metres. The sun was shining and the crowd were ready for a great race. The British athlete Derek Redmond was a top runner: he had a very good chance of winning a medal.

The race began. At first, Derek was running well. Then, after about 150 metres, he felt a pain in his leg. He fell down on one knee. He had a bad injury and couldn’t carry on. The other runners went past him and finished the race.

After about five seconds, Derek got up and started to run again, on one leg only. Some organizers tried to stop him but he kept going. The crowd stood up and started to clap. Then another man came onto the track—Derek’s father, Jim. His father put his arm around him and said, “Derek, you don’t have to do this.” Derek replied, “Yes, I do. I have to finish.” And so together they walked the last 50 metres and crossed the line.

When he finally crossed the line, Derek was crying and 60,000 people were cheering him.

In the summer of 2010, mountaineer Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner was almost at the top of a mountain called K2 in Nepal. She was trying to climb the 8,61l-metre mountain for the fifth time and this time she was climbing with her friend Fredrik Ericsson,

It was about 7 o’clock in the morning and it was snowing a little. The two climbers were getting ready to go up the last 400 metres. Fredrik was trying to tie some rope but he slipped and fell past Gerlinde. He fell 1,000 metres and was killed.

___▲  K2 was now a very sad place for her, and she thought perhaps she would never climb the mountain.

But there was something very important that she wanted to do: K2 is one of 14 mountains in the world that are 8,000 metes or higher, and her dream was to climb them all.

So in August 2011 she went back to Nepal and K2, and tried again. This time, she got to the top. Her dream was complete.