VANCOUVER -- The Olympics held in Vancouver might have been 10 years ago, but the memories are still fresh in the mind of gold medal athlete Alexandre Bilodeau.
"It's like everything was yesterday," he said, reflecting on his experience at the 2010 Games.
It was Feb. 14, 2010, and the freestyle skier from Montreal was on the verge of winning a gold medal in men's moguls. No Canadian had ever won an Olympic gold medal on home soil.
"I remember a lot of my mistakes from that run," he said. "From the front camera, you don't see anything. I look super clean. But from the side camera, you see that I'm back seat, I'm very close to going right on my butt."
But Bilodeau came out victorious, edging out Dale Begg-Smith from Austria to win the gold and become an Olympic champion on Canadian soil.
Making the win even more special was Bilodeau having his brother, Frederic, by his side celebrating the victory with him.
"Fred is definitely my best friend. He's somebody that I admire a lot because he doesn't complain about his physical abilities and he understands his limitations," Bilodeau said. Frederic lives with cerebral palsy, and Bilodeau said his victory was a celebration for both of them.
"It was not only my dream coming true. I think that throughout our lives, Frederic always lived his dreams through his sister, through myself, and he was always our biggest cheerleader," he said.
"It was kind of a victory for himself, and I wanted to share that with him. When you have important moments in your life, you want to share them with people close to your heart," he said.
Bilodeau is now an accountant based in Montreal but hopes his Olympic legacy helps inspire a new generation of athletes.
"Hopefully one day there's going to be a kid or Olympic champion that will mention they started freestyle skiing because he watched me in Vancouver," he said.
With files from CTV News Vancouver's Gary Rutherford
