The year was 1984. There was big hair. There was spandex. Aerobics was a thing. And the whole world minus the USSR was watching the summer Olympics  in Los Angeles. 
Kaarina Dillabough, wearing a pair of giant headphones, was looking out onto the middle of a white-painted gymnasium floor where Lori Fung, the Canadian competitor for rhythmic gymnastics, gripped the end of her six-metre ribbon. She raised it above her head. The ribbon rippled in the air conditioning. Photographers sat cross-legged on the floor behind her, training their cameras.
Dillabough was one of Lori's coaches. At Seneca College's High Performance Training Centre in Ontario, she'd coached her for years. Now Dillabough was commentating for the CBC, as another of Lori's coaches stood nearby. Lori was about to win the gold medal for Canada.
I'm very proud, Dillabough says now. I've got a photo of Lori that says, ÔÇÿYou were a very big part of the gold medal.'
Today Dillabough runs her own business. No longer training elite athletes, she helps people get to where they want to go, as a professional coach and mentor. 
The mentor-mentee (or mentor-prot├®g├®, if you want to be fancy) relationship is one of the oldest learning relationships in human history. The word itself is nearly three thousand years old: the term comes from the name Mentor, an old man who helps Telemachus in Homer's Odyssey. These relationships are older than dirt and nearly as universal as the relationships we have with our parents and siblings. 
Often, mentor figures don't just help you achieve your goals, but help you go even farther. After all  Dillabough, a coach for Olympic gold-medalists, originally thought she'd be a phys-ed teacher. Her own mentor changed that.
The person that I always indicate was my mentor'and he actually doesn't even know it'was Jack Donohue, says Dillabough.
Donohue, the former coach for the Canadian Olympic men's basketball team, led his teams to high distinction in a country fixated on hockey. What's more, he focused on more than making beefy players. He saw far more than just the athlete, Dillabough says. He saw them as human beings who would have an impact in the world, far beyond their athletic contributions. He said, ÔÇÿYou could be a great basketball player for a certain amount of time. You can be a good person for the rest of your life.'
Watching Jack coach athletes in sports and life, Dillabough realized she could do the same.  I believed I could make a difference. Not just on the court or in the athletic arena, but in their lives, based on these values of, we're holistic human beings. I don't just want you to be a champion on the floor: I want you to be a champion in life, I want you to be a role model, I want you to see the potential you have for affecting other people's lives by the message you can convey on and off the floor.
From there, things added up: in 1976, Dillabough performed at the Olympic opening ceremonies. She graduated and opened her own gymnastics club. I had done rhythmic gymnastics since I could walk, because my heritage is from Finland. So you breathe and you do rhythmic gymnastics. Afterwards, while lobbying for Olympic rhythmic gymnastics as part of Gymnastics Ontario, and training elite athletes in Seneca's High Performance Centre (where she and twelve other coaches trained Lori Fung), everything fell together. She opened her own consultancy and began to mentor everyone, not just athletes.
Dillabough says the mentor's role is to guide people through transitions. One of the biggest bubbles we operate in is, ÔÇÿI don't know what I don't know.' So as people are transitioning into new phases of life, they may be very unclear. A mentor can make those uncertain times a little bit more certain, and help someone figure out what they really want, and what they're really like. What the mentoring offers them is a mirror to look back at themselves, from a different perspective, she says.
And while you're off in dreamland thinking about all your fantastic goals, a mentor can also introduce the hard facts. They can also be a strong taskmaster and give the person a bit of a reality check, says Dillabough. Do you want to win a gold medal? It's a nice idea, but you'd better train so hard you see it in your sleep.
And speaking of training: you can't go looking for a mentor relationship without being willing to do the actual heavy lifting. Mentors can help you realize the path to your goals, but the decision to get there comes from you. Motivation is an inside-out job, Dillabough says. Our job as coaches is to fan the flames within others to be the best they can be, reach beyond their grasp. We're there in very much a mentoring and support capacity.
Knowing what to expect from a mentor is the first step toward finding one. A mentor can help you realize your abilities, and, if you do some legwork, achieve more than you could have imagined. And hey, if nothing else, they make it a heck of a lot easier to win a gold medal.
Olympic, business, and life coach Kaarina Dillabough's tips on finding a mentor
Ask for advice. Successful people share. Unsuccessful people don't. They might not share their secret-sauce recipe, but successful people love nothing more than being asked for opinions or advice.
Learn about them. Find out as much as you can about that person'what was their path?' So when you talk to them you're not just saying, with your hand out, you want the hand up. Do the homework.
Be clear about what you want. What is it that you want to achieve, and what is it that you want to get out of a mentoring relationship? Because if you don't know, surely you will get there, and if you do know, surely you should be able to get there. 
If you don't have a mentor, find one! You can check into associations and groups online. If you just plug into a search engine, mentoring programs (in the province that you live in), you can see if there's a mentoring program that's already available.
Photos: Kaarina Dillabough and Purestock/Thinkstock