1 . Thirteen can be a challenging age. Not only did I have to _______ my changing body, I also had to deal with the _______ move from my country home to a crowded suburb.

When we moved, my beloved _______, a small brown pony, had to be sold. Feeling alone, I couldn’t eat or sleep. I missed my friends and my pony. My father realized that and _______ an old horse for me in the market. I named him Cowboy.

Cowboy was without a doubt the _______ horse in the world, and he was pigeon-toed and knock-kneed. But I didn’t _______ his faults. I loved him beyond all reason. I joined a riding club and _______ rude comments about Cowboy’s looks. I never revealed how I felt, but deep down inside, my heart was _______. When Cowboy and I entered the events _______ the horse is judged on appearance, we were ________ out of the game. This ________ experience made me determined to do something.

And then I realized that my only chance to ________ would be in the timed-speed events. I chose barrel racing (绕桶比赛). For the whole next month I woke up early every day, rode Cowboy five miles to the arena (比赛场) and we ________ for hours in the hot sun.

My turn ________ came. At the signal, we dashed toward the first barrel, quickly whipped around it and with perfect precision ________ the second and thundered on to the third. We tore around the final curve and shot for the ________ line. No cheers filled the air. The end of our run was met with surprised ________. With the sound of my heart pounding in my ears, I heard the ________ call our time. Cowboy and I had beaten other fancy horses and won the blue ribbon!

________, I gained much more than a blue ribbon that day. At thirteen, I realized that no matter what the difficulties, I’d always come out a ________ if I wanted something badly enough to work for it. I can be the master of my own destiny.

2 . In an international spelling contest (竞赛) in America, an 11-year-old girl was asked to spell a certain word. But with her _________ voice the judges were not sure if she spelled the word with the letter A or E. They talked it over and _________ decided to simply ask her what she had said. By now, the girl knew she had _________ the word, but instead of lying, she told the truth that she had said the _________ letter — so she lost the contest.

As the girl walked off the _________, the entire audience stood to their feet, clapping (鼓掌) to applaud her _________. Later, dozens of newspaper reporters wrote about this 11-year-old girl’s good quality, even when it _________ her the contest. But the fact is that she _________ the biggest contest that day: the contest of her _________.

Probably the biggest test of our character and honesty is what we should do if we knew we would never get __________. This young girl could easily have __________ and nobody would have known it but herself. But that’s just it: She would know she did wrong. It’s been said, “If you __________, you make yourself cheap.” This young girl was strong and smart enough to __________ her own conscience (良知) and character more than the prize from a spelling __________. Her pride was more important than any __________ others might give her for winning a contest. She knew she would have to __________ herself and the choice she made in that moment will have long-lasting influence.

It’s so true that the choices you make today __________ you what you are tomorrow. Our children will __________ our behavior much more than our advice. So if we want them to __________ to be honest, we must show them the way by being honest ourselves. Remember, our kids are __________ what we do and how we live even when we don’t think they see or know.

3 . I believe even the smartest people have to work hard to achieve success, because there is no such person as a born winner. People turn themselves into winners by their own       _______

I learned this lesson from a(n) _______ many years ago. I took the head _______ job at a school in Baxley, Georgia. It was a small school with a weak football program.

It was a _______ for the school’s old team to play against the new team at the end of spring practice. The old team had no coach, and they didn’t even practice to _______ the game. Being the coach of the new team, I was excited because I knew we were going to win, but to my disappointment we were defeated. I couldn’t _______ I had got into such a situation. Thinking hard about it, I came to _______ that my team might not be the number one team in Georgia, but they were _______ me. I had to change my _______ towards their ability and potential.

I started doing anything I could to help them build a little ________. Most importantly, I began to treat them like ________. That summer, When the other teams enjoyed their       ________, we met every day and ________ passing and kicking the football.

Six months after suffering our ________ on the spring practice field, we won our first game and our second, and continued to win. ________, we faced the number one team in the state. I felt that it would be a ________ for us even if we lost the game. But that wasn’t what happened. My boys beat the best team in Georgia, giving me the greatest ________     of my life!

From the experience I learnt a lot about how the attitude of the leader can ________       the members of a team. Instead of seeing my boys as losers, I pushed and ________ them. I helped them to see themselves ________, and they built themselves into winners. Winners are made, not born.

6 . My son Joey was born with club feet (足内翻). The doctors _______ us that with treatment he would be able to walk _______ — but would never _______ very well. The first three years of his life were spent in surgery, casts and braces._______ the time he was eight, you wouldn’t know he had a problem when you saw him walk.

In seventh grade he decided to _______ for the cross-country team. Every day he _______ with the team. He worked harder and ran more than any of the others — perhaps he _______ that the abilities that seemed to come _______ to so many others did not come naturally to him. Although the _______ team runs, only the top seven runners have the ________ to score points for the school. We didn’t tell him he probably would never ________ the team, so he didn’t know.

He ________ to run four to five miles a day, every day — ________ the day he had a 103-degree fever. I was ________, so I went to look for him after school. I found him running all   ________. I asked him how he felt. “Okay,” he said. He had two more miles to go. The ________ ran down his face and his eyes were glassy from his ________. Yet he looked straight ahead and kept running.

Two weeks ________ , the names of the team runners were called. Joey was number six on the list. Joey had made the team. We never told him he shouldn’t ________ to make the team. We never told him he couldn’t do it...so he didn’t know. He just ________ it.

7 . Exercise and I had never had a good relationship due to my fear of sports. From a young age, my dad _______ me into a dozen sports. I didn’t like any of them, _______.

When I entered the University of Regina, my dad _______ telling me “You have to find a way to stay _______.” or “You don’t want to get the Freshman 15, do you?” So I _______ to give swimming a shot, but I _______ managed to go to the pool twice during the fall semester (学期). Worse still, I was _______ to convince myself that’s OK.

The spring semester came. A friend of mine _______ me if I wanted to try Zumba (尊巴) with her. All I knew about Zumba was that it was basically a kind of exercise: dancing to Latin pop songs. It didn’t sound too bad, but I couldn’t be _______.

I went, and that was it. Zumba became my ________ of tea. The instructor would always say, “Don’t worry about the steps. Have fun. Do your own thing.” That removed my ________ of sports. I didn’t have to be ________. I didn’t even have to be good. I just needed to ________ the music and move. Zumba did ________ me from the Freshman 15, and it also did so much more. It let me make ________ with my unpleasant past about physical exercise, and enjoy staying healthy.

8 . Ken Campbell had last attempted running at high school. When his wife, Susan, injured her foot, she needed _________ to rejoin her running group, so Campbell went along to keep her company in the _________. “We were just walking at the beginning,” he says, “I was heavy, and weighed over 90kg.” But as the weeks and months passed, the weight _________, Susan recovered and Campbell’s _________ grew. At the age of 63, he ran 50km, and at 70, he completed a 100km ultramarathon.

So how does someone with no _________ precedent (先例) become an ultradistance runner in his 60s and 70s? Susan had run marathons before her _________, but for Campbell, the turning point came when Susan’s Fleet Feet running group _________ the trails in the Sierra Nevada foothills near their home.

Campbell went out to visit Susan’s group, and “the trails were a terrible _________. It had been raining, and I was slipping, _________ and falling. But I thought, well, I like this a lot.”

What he liked __________ was the feeling of “being wrapped by the trail, being __________ by the closeness of the vegetation (植被) and the nearness of the river. I was walking where __________ people had walked for thousands of years and where miners had walked on their way to gold.”

Running the 100km ultramarathon took Campbell 16 hours. When Campbell __________ the finish line at 3 am, Susan handed him a 100km sticker to __________ on the back of his truck. He already had a 50km one on there. “It is a public statement that you are part of this __________,” he says. “Wherever we park, I see a line of __________ with their various stickers and I feel that we are a tribe (部落).”

Campbell suffered arthritis (关节炎) before he started running, and was “a(n) __________ for knee replacement”, but for now, he is __________ on surgery. It can __________ the running—but the “sense of wellbeing and accomplishment will carry me on forever”, he says, “If I can’t run, I will __________.”

9 . If this time last year you had told me that an exercise bike would save me, I’d have_________you were wrong. I’d have protested that I’m not athletic at all. My coordination is lacking and my_________is like tortoise.

In Grade 7, my physical education teacher watched me, eyebrow_________, as I tried my best to follow the gymnastic training. “You’re doing pretty well in my class,” he said, “for someone with no_________for sports at all.”

In high school, I wasn’t_________for a single team. I was bookish and slow, and that_________of being better suited to quiet reading and leisurely walks_________with me for a long time.

I discovered jogging in my late 20s, and I enjoyed the feeling of quiet accomplishment—without the fear of_________teammates. I tried yoga and always prioritized_________pursuits over physical ones.

It was,__________, my gradually worsening mental condition that finally forced me to rethink about exercising. This winter, under pandemic, I found myself__________under the weight of exhaustion. I knew__________had to change. I needed an outlet to release the__________of months of online conferencing and on-and-off solo parenting at home. Jogging in the morning wasn’t enough to__________it.

I__________an exercise bike and hoped to have positive results. Since early March, I’ve hardly__________a day on my bike. I’m not the fastest, but I stick to it. I’m finally learning that movement isn’t__________about athleticism (运动才能). More than anything, it’s the feeling of accomplishment when you insist on something__________outside of your comfort zone.

Athletes find glory in sports. For the rest of us, the__________is more personal: better sleep, improved mood and boosted confidence. It was never about talent. That’s what I wish my physical education teacher had told me. If only he’d said, “You’re doing really well in my class. Look at your__________.”