If you saw the opening ceremony for the 2010 Olympic Games, you probably saw Johnny Lyall, the snowboarder who jumped through the Olympic rings to start the opening ceremony and welcome the world to Vancouver.
Lyall is scheduled to attend the Gibsons Rotary Club dinner on Nov. 12 to talk about what went on behind the scenes to make such an impressive stunt possible.
He gave a sneak preview of his talk in an interview with Coast Reporter last week.
“They chose me and two other guys,” he said. “The three of us knew for about a year in advance that one of us would be jumping through the rings and welcoming the world to the Olympics, but we weren’t sure who it was going to be.
“It wasn’t until the night before the opening ceremonies that the producer came out and said, ‘All right, I need to choose one of you. I can’t decide, so we’re going to decide with the most Canadian way possible,’” Lyall said.
Lyall was chosen, although he wouldn’t reveal what the “most Canadian way possible” meant before his talk.
“I had nerves that I had never felt before,” Lyall said. “I think one good thing was only knowing for 24 hours that it was actually – 100 per cent – going to be me. I was very nervous but I had to keep thinking positive thoughts because it’s so easy to be negative and think, oh no, what if I fall and ruin the Olympics?”
After he made the jump, Lyall said his nerves dissipated immediately. People asked him afterwards if he was nervous delivering his welcoming line to the audience, but he said at that point it was easy.
“Once I’d landed it, I was so happy. In my mind I was done, I did it,” Lyall said. “It was amazing excitement. It was the beginning of the games and I got to start it off on a high.”
Lyall started snowboarding when he was 12 years old. It quickly became a major passion in his life and he dreamed of one day becoming a professional snowboarder.
“But I thought, that’s not possible,” Lyall said. “I love snowboarding, but what are the odds of that actually happening? If you want something bad enough, though, I think you naturally get drawn towards it.”
Gibsons Rotary Club program co-ordinator Luke Vostermans saw Lyall giving a talk at a Vancouver Rotary function a couple of months ago. He approached Lyall afterwards and asked him to come speak on the Coast.
“Our club has about 30 to 33 members now, so we’re really growing,” Vostermans said. “One of the things that we do is, we’re always looking for new members. So this is an opportunity for the members to invite a guest and then we tell them what Rotary is all about and provide a good feature speaker.”
Lyall will be the featured speaker on Nov. 12. He was born and raised in Vancouver, spent his winters in Whistler and his summers on the Sunshine Coast. “The West Coast is really ingrained in me,” he said. “My grandparents have a place in Halfmoon Bay so I’ve been going there since I was born.”
Rotary members are welcome; non-members need to be invited. If you are interested in attending, you can call president-elect Fran Miller at 604-741-2240. Dinner is at 6:30 p.m. and Lyall will give his talk after dinner.
