Career
Jon Montgomery started skeleton racing when he lived in Calgary where he worked as an auctioneer not far from Canada Olympic Park in Calgary. Sometime in 2002 Montgomery visited the track with his parents where a skeleton race was being held. Montgomery was immediately hooked with the sport and started racing competitively not long after watching it in Calgary. Initially Jon Montgomery did not do well in his first two seasons competing on the World Cup tour. However, Montgomery won his first World Cup race in Cesana, Italy in 2008. He won two silver medals at the 2008 FIBT World Championships in Altenberg, Germany, earning them in the men's skeleton and mixed bobsleigh bobsleigh-skeleton team event. Montgomery's highest World Cup overall placing came when he finished second overall in the 2007–08 Skeleton World Cup.
Montgomery qualified for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver based on his results in the 2009-10 Skeleton World Cup. In the Olympic event Montgomery had trailed Martins Dukurs after the first run but established the fastest times the following two runs, including a track record 52.20 on his third run. In the fourth and final run on February 19, 2010, Montgomery still trailed Martins Dukurs by 0.18 seconds but Dukurs' was 0.25 seconds slower on his final run. Thus Montgomery won the gold medal by 0.07 seconds. Montgomery celebrated exuberantly at first and quickly apologised to Dukurs for his celebration. Montgomery was quoted after the race, "I had said at the beginning of the race that if I was in that position and I did get gold coming from behind that I was going to remain stoic and respectful because you never want to cheer when somebody else loses. But I have to apologize to Martins. That didn't happen. I lost my mind when I saw the .07 come up. It was like I had stuck my finger in a light socket." He accepted his gold medal at the medal ceremony in Whistler on February 20, 2010. Montgomery became the second Canadian in a row to win gold in the men's event, after Duff Gibson in 2006.
Following his win, Montgomery marched through a crowd of Canadian fans singing the national anthem and chugging a pitcher of beer. In an interview with CTV, he stated that he has a tattoo of a maple leaf over his heart with the word Canada above it which he got with his mother after he graduated from high school in grade 12. Montgomery stated that he hopes his gold medal performance inspires more people to enter amateur sports, and went on to reassure mothers that skeleton is a safe sport for children to enter. Jon Montgomery also said that he hopes his gold medal victory will help to establish an all-amateur sports channel for Canadian athletes.
Montgomery also wore an image of a painted turtle on the crown of his helmet while racing and explained the usage, saying he had decided to do so after finding one trying to cross the road in British Columbia. BC Hydro noted his representation of the endangered (in coastal British Columbia) in describing their sponsorship of research into the turtle's conservation.
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