Scott Hamilton stood on the top step of the Olympic podium in Sarajevo in 1984 — the men's figure skating gold medal around his neck, the American flag rising, the anthem playing. It was the peak. The moment every athlete dreams about. The moment that defines a career.
But Scott Hamilton will tell you that the most powerful moment of his life did not happen on ice. It happened in a living room, with his wife holding his hands, praying over a cancer diagnosis that should have destroyed him.
The Diagnosis
In 1997, at the height of his post-Olympic career — touring with Stars on Ice, commentating, building a brand — Scott was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He was forced off the ice and into chemotherapy.
The fear, he says, was extraordinary. Not the kind of fear you reason your way out of. The kind that sits in your chest and will not move. The kind that wakes you at three in the morning and shows you every worst-case scenario in high definition.
The Fear Flips
Then something happened. The fear flipped.
Scott describes it simply — without drama, without theological jargon. The fear was extraordinary. And then it changed direction. Instead of paralysing him, it became fuel. He decided to be the best patient his doctors had ever seen. He attacked the treatment with the same discipline he had brought to the ice.
But what changed was not just his attitude. It was something underneath the attitude. Something that came from outside himself.
The Encounter
After beating testicular cancer, Scott met his wife, Tracie. She brought him to church — to a minister named Ken Durham. For the first time, Scott began to understand what it meant to have a relationship with God that was not based on performance or willpower but on love.
Then the brain tumours started. The first one appeared when their first child was fourteen months old. When Scott finally told Tracie, she did not panic. She did not cry. She grabbed both his hands and prayed.
"It was the most powerful moment of my life."
Not the Olympic gold. Not the standing ovations. A woman holding his hands and talking to God in their living room. That is when Scott Hamilton understood what fearlessness actually looks like. It looks like love — the kind that prays before it plans.
The Healing
The first brain tumour was treated. Then a second came. Then a third, in 2016. For the third tumour, Scott felt impressed by the Holy Spirit to do things differently. He chose not to rush to surgery. He prayed. He trusted. And the tumour shrank by more than forty-five percent.
His doctors could not explain it. Scott could: "God was there every single time."
What This Means for You
If you are in the grip of cancer fear right now — the three-in-the-morning kind, the kind that will not let you breathe — Scott Hamilton knows that fear. He lived in it. And he watched it flip.
Not through willpower. Not through positive thinking. Through an encounter with a God whose love is strong enough to enter the darkest room in your mind and turn the lights on.
You do not need to be an Olympic champion to experience this. You just need to let someone grab your hands and pray. The fear is real. But God's love is realer. And it is available to you right now — in the waiting room, in the scan queue, in the middle of the night when sleep will not come.
Scott Hamilton says he has never been more at peace than he is in his faith. That peace is not reserved for gold medallists. It is reserved for anyone willing to receive it.
