Why would anyone want to be an Olympic athlete?
After this year’s television coverage of the Winter Olympics, it seems we’ve learned a few hard lessons. Stuff like: Coming in second place is losing; trying your best isn’t good enough; the medal race is all that matters; and only a few countries besides the United States exist and/or are worth any air time.
As far as I’m concerned, the most impressive and memorable moment of the entire shindig was Bode Miller’s near-wipeout on the super-G course. He managed to keep all his weight on one leg going mach 10 while the other leg flailed wildly, his ski vibrating like a string on Keith Richards’ guitar. It was a flawless performance in terms of demonstrating an incomprehensible degree of physical strength and athletic talent. I don’t care if he didn’t win a stupid gold medal. He’s cool as a cucumber and clearly understands winning isn’t everything, particularly when the difference between first and second place is fractions of a second.
The media that propped him up on a pedestal before the Turin Games started also pushed him off it, even though it seemed clear enough that he really didn’t want to be there in the first place. I’m guessing skiing matters to him more than winning does. Isn’t there a lesson to be learned from that? Or do people take some kind of sick pleasure in seeing people fail? Sure, we love it when our own win, but we seem to love it even more when they don’t, so we can pick them apart and figure out why.
In “America’s 10 Biggest Busts Of The Olympics,” a story posted on msnbc.com Sunday, sports columnist Mike Celizic reduced Miller’s Olympic effort to a joke and wrote: “Although American medal hopeful Bode Miller failed to complete another race, Sestriere bars reported a 40 percent increase in sales, which they attributed entirely to his visits.”
Never mind that these athletes train every day and compete in hundreds of events every year. No one cares about that. No one pays attention.
I cringe every time I think of Lindsey Jacobellis, who “lost” the gold in the boardercross race when she crashed after throwing a relatively simply trick off the final jump.
I’ve watched Lindsey compete since she was in high school, and I can’t think of a worse-case scenario. She was the only snowboarder in Winter X Games 2004 to compete in all three snowboard disciplines (slopestyle, halfpipe and boardercross), and the youngest competitor to boot. I couldn’t help but think she was out of place in the laid-back ranks of snowboarding – a little too uptight maybe, a little too driven. She walked around with a tortured look of dejection on her face every time she didn’t reach the podium, and I remember worrying about what would happen if she didn’t win. It looked like it might traumatize her for life.
I can’t think of anyone who will suffer more from such a mistake. Surely she will lie awake at night, replaying that whole episode over and over in her mind. No one will remember her as a silver medalist. Instead, she will be the girl who foolishly lost a gold medal.
It seems to me that within the context of Olympic sports, the higher you climb, the further you have to fall – especially in a country that seems to thrive on the scrutiny of fallen stars. In the mountains, the higher you climb, the better the view.
If I had the money, I would pile Bode and Lindsey into a helicopter and give them a reward they deserve a lot more than some dumb piece of metal: the joy of a perfect powder day.
Freelance columnist Alison Berkley can be reached at alison@berkleymedia.com.
