Inspiration to Live Your Magic: 75 Inspiring Biographies

parties represented.
Dr. Maathai was eventually elected to the national parliament, won the Nobel Peace Prize 
in 2004, and planted a tree with Barack Obama. Today, she continues to work for the 
causes she is known for - people and the environment.
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Wayne Gretzky
They told him he was too small, too slow, and too weak. But what 
those coaches and scouts from thirty years ago did not realize was that 
Wayne Gretzky was unstoppable.
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From the time he learned to skate at age two, in his father’s backyard rink in Brantford, 
Ontario, Wayne loved hockey. He would skate, practice, and play hockey every spare 
moment, even gobbling down his dinner while wearing his skates so that he could rush 
back out to the ice again and play until dark.
Gretzky credits his father with teaching him the secrets to success, in hockey and in life - 
to work hard and make the best use of your strengths.
Wayne Gretzky was neither the biggest nor fastest hockey player on any of his teams. In 
fact, he was usually much smaller than the other players because he would play against 
older boys. And this seemed only fair - at age six, Wayne could outplay any ten-year-old!
Despite his lack of size and speed, Wayne had such phenomenal talent in passing the 
puck, making plays, and avoiding the checks of the larger players that he became a child 
hockey star. He set records and won scoring championships everywhere he went.
But the so-called experts dismissed Wayne’s skills and said he could not make it in the 
stronger, tougher competition of the National Hockey League (NHL). Several teams 
passed over the chance to sign him up; it was a decision that every one of them would 
come to regret.
Over a twenty-year NHL career, Wayne Gretzky broke every record in the book. By the 

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time he retired in 1999, he held forty regular-season records, fifteen playoff records, and 
six All-Star records. With more than thirty NHL awards and trophies, including four 
Stanley Cup championships, Gretzky’s entry in the official record books is longer than 
that of any other hockey player.
Some of his records may never be broken; no other player has ever scored 200 points in a 
season, something that Wayne did four times! He capped his incredible career in 2002 by 
coaching Canada’s Olympic hockey team to its first gold medal in fifty years.
When Wayne Gretzky stopped playing, every single team in the NHL retired his number 
- there will never be another number 99 in the NHL. Today, the hockey experts no longer 
talk about his lack of size or speed. They simply call him “The Great One.”
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