Olympics Withdrawal: Sunday musings…3/1/2026
1) Olympics Fan. The White family, certainly my generation and that of my parents, is filled with Olympics fanatics. I’ve been home alone for 10 of the last 17 or so days without the Olympics to fill the vacuum. It’s a type of emotional and adrenaline withdrawal.
I can’t believe I have to wait two years for my next dose.
2) Olympics Spectator. Our little branch of the White family was in the middle of our life as a skiing/riding family when the Winter Olympics descended on our adopted winter towns of Salt Lake and Park City. Beth bought not one but TWO homes in response to my fear that we would have more trouble finding and affording housing for the 2002 Winter Olympics than we would finding and affording event tickets.
Like all things real estate she stuck the landing on that one.
We invited my Mom and Dad, the Olympics junky OG’s, to come along for a 10 day trip filled with a smorgasbord of events familiar to all (did you know the Czech hockey team had cheerleaders?!) and so obscure that we really didn’t know they existed (short-track speed skating relays!). Our experience mirrored Mom and Dad’s L.A ’84 trip on which they checked out almost 2 dozen different events. Including, in a fun kind of foreshadowing, equestrian! Mom had a foot injury which severely limited her ability to walk on hillsides; the image I see as I write is my 13 yo son pushing his Gram’s wheelchair to the front of the line at every event as we rode her coattails into each venue.
Those were good days. We have our sights on L.A. 2028 and the equestrian events.
3) Olympics Heroes. Each version of the Olympic games anoints a new group of heroes while simultaneously confirming the heroic status of multi-Games veterans. Milan/Cortina was no different. Who will ever forget the rings of color in Alyssa Leu’s hair? Has there ever been a more famous tooth than Chris Hughes left upper incisor? Heroes from Games long-passed re-emerge. Wasn’t it cool to see the quiet grace of Eric Heiden on display as he cheered on an heir-apparent? Or Ryan Cochrane-Seigel re-introducing us all to his Gold Medal winning Mom, Barbara Cochrane?
My personal favorite “remembered” Olympic hero is the 1960 figure skating Gold Medalist Carol Heiss-Jenkins, a friend here at home. How lovely to read about her, to hear true experts opine that she may have been the greatest of all the American figure skating greats. And to see her shyly smile and shrug it all off.
In a fortnight filled with both the creation and confirmation of hero status I found the stories of two American women skiers to be the most compelling. I admit to paying much more attention to Team USA. I also admit to being more than a little bit partial to those athletes that catch the attention of my friend Tim, a sportswriter who wrote about both. Mikaela Shiffrin conquered 8 years of grief to win the Gold Medal in women’s slalom 12 years after her triumph as an 18 year old. 4 years after skiing off course and a week after perhaps her slowest run in competition in years, Shiffrin lapped the field and won. Honestly, it was hard not to cry as she fell to the snow.
Then of course, Lindsey Vonn. Admit it, you were skeptical last year when you heard that Vonn, pain free after a partial knee replacement, had returned to the World Cup circuit after a year of under the radar training. Gobsmacked when she had a couple of podium finishes, and electrified when she won a Downhill. I sure felt all of that. And like me you were disappointed and sad when you heard that she had crashed and blown out the ACL on her GOOD leg two weeks before Snoop Dogg carried the flame around Milan. Because we honestly thought she had a chance. We wanted her to have that chance.
Why? Why did we care about Lindsey Vonn and her quest for one last shot at Gold at 41 years of age? Beth and I, Olympics junkies that we are, watched the story unfold with a deep sadness. Like everyone it seems, we were surprised and a bit skeptical when word reached us that Vonn would ski regardless. We are literally her parents’ age; our instinct was to reach out through the TV enfold her in a parental cocoon while we whispered “it’s OK, it’s enough.” But there we were a couple of days later, a little excited at a 5th fastest training run, a little pleased to hear there was no pain. Wary, nearly convinced on that one last run.
You know how this ended, of course. In her quest for speed it was not her knee or her technique that let her down, it was a tiny tactical error magnified by that speed that did her in.
It appears that Lindsey’s injuries, while much more catastrophic than apparent at the outset, will be overcome, and we collectively sigh in relief. There are lessons here for high achievers of all types in fields both athletic and intellectual, but those are Random Thoughts for another time. Which brings me back to my friend Tim and his thoughts on Lindsey Vonn and her quest: “She inspired fans and others who do not have her talent or courage, but who marvel at it–which is what sports do for us, even if they do not provide happy endings. It was historic, all of it, and it is a shame that Vonn did not make it to the bottom of the Olympia de Tofane, but it is a miracle that she made it to the top.”
We are grateful for the miracle that was “all of it”.
I’ll see you next week…
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