Vancouver is an amazing city and luckily, growing up in the Seattle area, I was able to immerse myself into the culture at a young age, traveling back and forth across the border for skating competitions as a youngster.

It is not up to me whether I win or lose. Ultimately, this might not be my day. And it is that philosophy towards sports, something that I really truly live by. I am emotional. I want to win. I am hungry. I am a competitor. I have that fire. But deep down, I truly enjoy the art of competing so much more than the result.

I wanted to play football or be a boxer, but my dad didn't want that because of all the impact. But in 1992 I was watching short track, and it was obscure, but they looked like superheroes in their tight outfits, and I thought it was amazing. I wanted to do that. I made the national team at 14.

I have a scar on my left thigh, kind of almost near my knee. I essentially fell in the 2002 Olympics and when I hit the wall - because of the impact - my right leg kind of came in at like a knife-type angle and stabbed my leg with my own skate blade.

I like to live well and I feel good about it because I know how much we give back. There's plenty for my family, now let's take care of the rest.

Far from being the basis of the good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents.

As an adult, you think of yourself as being someone else when you're away from your family, but when you come back to your family, you suddenly find yourself back in the exact same role that you always had in your family as a child and as a teenager.

After the love of my family, there's nothing more important to me than winning football games.