Exalted Victors

When an Olympic ice skater finishes a routine, what you usually see on their flushed faces looks more like relief than anything else, especially when they’ve managed to get to the end without falling or making mistakes. Which is understandable, given the difficulty of what they have to do and the pressure of representing one’s country and having a once in a lifetime chance to prove themselves on the biggest international stage. They glide off the ice exhausted and with an eye on the camera, anxious about the score. They put a sleek, professional smile on, keep it there even when the score is lower than they want or need it to be. They know they can’t truly show disappointment or anger, maintaining an air of happiness even as they struggle not to crumble under the immense pressures of the moment. Sometimes even their greatest joys can feel a bit hollow, or forced, because they’re not allowed to be anything else. They have to continue being controlled, locked into the performance of being an Olympic athlete—wearing happiness like a part of their costume, an illusion for the viewers to buy into, even if we know it’s all a show. 

But with the millions of other people around the world who watched Alysa Liu win the gold medal in the women’s individual free skate at the Winter Olympics four days ago, becoming the first American female figure skater to win the event since 2002, I was mesmerized by the joy and sense of freedom at the heart of her unusual performance. What was so impressive wasn’t just her technical ability—which was abundantly clear even to casual fans, who couldn’t imagine doing anything she did, as much as it was to the judges—the wondrous part was that she seemed to be having fun. Not performing having fun, or playing into the theater of her routine, but genuinely enjoying herself, an impression that lasted long after her historic performance was done. 

For all the advertisement of the Olympics and elite sports as the stage for human possibility and achievement, a space to see the best athletes push the limits on what the body can do, most athletes don’t seem to enjoy themselves. One of the arguments most often used to diminish the achievements of well-paid top-tier athletes is to sneer that they’re getting paid to play a child’s game. Which is true, though that says more about our desire for entertainment than it does about whether or not sports are worthwhile. They may be games for children, but we’re all watching. It’s ironic that these most elite versions of children’s games are often missing the laughter and joy that children bring to them as they experience the thrill of movement and self-discovery through sport. 

Once playing sports becomes a formalized experience, and you’re taught that each success or failure is a referendum on your value as a person—once winning and “chasing greatness,” as Nike advertisements would say, becomes the only goal of participating in any sport—then happiness and joy become more elusive. It’s no surprise that so many youth athletes burn out, or that so many of the ones who do make it deal with mental health issues, which they also don’t feel capable of expressing, or free to express. Anyone who betrays exhaustion or frustration at the pressures and reduction of one’s life to the binary of success or bust is seen as weak. They’re seen as lacking the mentality necessary to be a true great at their sport. 

Our idea of a great athlete is not a happy one. Happiness rarely factors into it, even though it’s so welcome and so loved when an athlete truly shows joy. More frequently top athletes, if they’re miserable everywhere in their life but are able to win and do well at their sport, are still celebrated as having very successful lives. As long as the records, gold medals, and victorious moments for the fans keep coming, we have almost no care whether the person performing marvels for us is actually happy; they’ve done what we need them to do, which is to show us that unimaginable things are possible, and to entertain and thrill us. If they are driven to ruin and misery in that pursuit, we reframe their sufferings as evidence of their dedication to their craft, and proof that chasing greatness and being immortalized supersedes everything else in life. 

We treat athletes, in other words, similarly to how we treat artists; people in difficult, exacting disciplines that ask enormous sacrifices of their practitioners. And this is one of the reasons that I have pushed for sports to be thought of as an art, like making music, painting, acting, writing, and so on. Sports is just as much of a space for self-discovery and self-expression as any of the other arts, and creates images and recordings of power and beauty to inspire people for as long as they endure. 

There’s the same kind of contradiction at the heart of all these arts in that we value the artists for their interpretations and ability, for what they express about themselves and the world, on whatever stage and canvas they choose, while confining them to working and living the same as any unhappy wage slave who will be discarded once they express unhappiness or unwillingness to continue with the assigned program of shutting up, putting their heads down, and getting back to work. We want them to show us who they are, but only if it’s done with the obedient attitude and emotional restrictions of a worker on an assembly line. Produce, produce, produce. This is the price of admission; we’ve convinced ourselves that misery itself must be tied to artistic brilliance. 

I don’t mean to equate the conditions of an assembly-line worker with those of a well-paid athlete, since the pay and fame obviously help to alleviate the physical and emotional problems that come with poverty. Few can argue that these problems are the same at the bottom as at the top of the economic hierarchy. What I want to say instead is that watching Liu enjoy herself on the ice, and the reaction that sprang up in response from the fans and even the commentators, I feel like there’s a more real and substantial version of the arts that keeps staring us in the face, but that we can only acknowledge as exceptions before going back to the normal way of things. 

Earlier in the Olympics, Liu declared that medals weren’t what gave her validation but instead it was the process and possibility of creation. She compared herself to an artist:

Medals do not validate me in any way; that's not how I feel validation. I give myself validation when I'm able to create and when I have, you know, a sheet of ice or a dance room to do what I love to do…I want people to know that I'm an artist and I appreciate all the different art forms. I love watching skating. I love skating. I love fashion. I love looking at paintings. I love editing. I love photography. I like all of that. And I love dance. And choreography on the ice.

Here, Liu stands in severe contrast with someone like Ilia Malinin, who was under so much pressure that it seemed to overwhelm him straight into failure in the men’s singles event. Underneath the brilliance and technical excellence in his skating you could sense that he was trying to live up to the extreme expectations so flawlessly that there was a coldness to what he was doing.

He told NBC afterwards: “Something we go through as athletes… just all this constant voices, these attention, the pressure, everything, you know, forced upon you, and it’s very hard to deal with.”

It was no surprise, then, that Malinin’s exhibition gala skate was a performance of trying to find and restore his happiness within the pressure. At least for one night, his performance in the exhibition gala was as powerful as it was warm, after he had failed and as a consequence had been freed from the diminishment of his art into nothing more than which medal he could win.

It’s no great insight to say that athletes perform better when there’s less pressure, or that one of the markers of a great athlete is to be at your best when the pressure is at its highest. Those moments are thrilling, and have inspired generations of future athletes and the general population for as long as sports has existed. But after watching Liu, I kept wondering why her win felt so much more alive, even as someone in the audience. And it’s because it felt like I was sharing in something more than just watching it. There was an openness to her, a freedom that invited you in. 

I felt the same way watching Liu as I do when I see little kids running around and giggling in the park, playing any number of different games. They’re so enamored with what they can do and what they can try, so immersed in the activity and the experience of being embodied human beings discovering as much as expressing themselves in the moment, with a lightness and openness that play deserves, that the joy spreads out from them like rays of the sun, warming those nearby. It’s so wonderfully ironic that in the Olympics that are constantly advertising all the hard traits that athletes require to win, the grit, grind, and teeth gnashing of being a superior athlete, that one of the biggest stars of the tournament won the world over by embodying and appealing to that sense of childlike wonder; hers, and our own. 

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