The Olympics and the Agony of Defeat

"But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for." ~Paulo Coelho

Last week I blogged about how great the Olympics were because of deserving people winning gold. This week, I'll write about the other side of the coin. Sometimes people work hard, get their chance, and things just don't go their way.

That's what happened to US snowboarder, Lindsey Jacobellis. Four years ago in Torino, she made a mistake that cost her the gold. In the snowboard cross competition, there were four women racing for gold. Lindsey was way in front...having what seemed to be an insurmountable lead. She went off the last jump and decided to do a "showboat" move, a method grab. So she jumped, grabbed the edge of her snowboard....and fell. A Swiss boarder passed her, despite havin been three seconds behind, and took the gold. Lindsey took silver.


She has waited 4 years for redemption. That's the thing about the Olympics, you don't just have to wait a few months for the next season to redeem yourself like you do in other sports. You have to wait four years. Four years that you dedicate to that moment, four years of hard work to have one chance. She waited because she wanted her gold.


She waited four years for redemption...that didn't come. Last week, in the semi-finals in Vancouver, Lindsey landed badly off of a jump (nothing fancy, regular jump on the course) and went through a gate, meaning she was disqualified.


We like to hear the happy stories from the Olympics, the nice guys winning. The couple who worked for 18 years finally gets their gold medal. But there are plenty of tales of defeat as well. Sometimes, no matter how hard you work and how much you might deserve something, it's just not meant to be. That's the Olympics, and that's life.