SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU D13
b eijing OlyMPicsI attended one medal
ceremony. It was for Jackson, the
first Black woman to win an
individual event at the Winter
Olympics. And in a sense, it was
for Bowe, who saw past her own
self-interests in a way that few
ever do.
On a cold Monday night,
Jackson wore a blue coat and
blue gloves as she took the
podium, awaiting her gold. And
she cried, this 29-year-old Black
inline skater from Florida
commanding attention at the
Winter Olympics after taking up
speedskating just five years ago.
It seemed too improbable. But
before the emotional part, she
had a mishap that made it even
better. As a coronavirus
precaution, Jackson was asked to
place the medal around her own
neck. She put it on backward.
She was nervous. She was real.
It was lovely to see.
Jackson pulled on the ribbon
and flipped it around so the gold
would show. As “The Star-
Spangled Banner” began, she
cried harder, the truest of tears,
an image of the Beijing Winter
Olympics that didn’t need a fake
background.Finland cross-country skier
Kerttu Niskanen crossed the
finish line second and praised
gold medalist Therese Johaug of
Norway.
“Therese is the queen of cross-
country,” Niskanen said. “And
now I feel like I’m... little
princess.”
Let’s remember the awful
stuff, especially the atrocities
that will continue unchecked.
But let’s not forget the humanity.
What was real? These athletes
were. These people were. The
most restrictive sports bubble of
the pandemic stole much of the
joy, but you left feeling
something worthwhile anyway.
For most of the Games, despite
writing about medals every day, I
didn’t see one around the neck of
an Olympian. The protocol for
the past few Olympics has been
to hold victory ceremonies daily
at a plaza instead of honoring the
athlete on-site. There is a victory
ceremony after the competition,
but the winners have to wait for
the real thing. As someone
hopping from event to event, it’s
disorienting to witness glory and
not experience the most
important thrill.uplifting the past month.”
The Olympics weren’t a
spectacle this time. They were a
bad concept for a reality
television show, complete with
fan-deprived venues that looked
good only as an NBC soundstage.
The experience took such a
mental toll that snowboarder
Jamie Anderson, a two-time
slopestyle gold medalist, said,
“Part of me just wants to quit.”
Anderson is usually as
optimistic as it gets. She left
Beijing with a ninth-place
slopestyle finish, and she didn’t
qualify for the final in big air
after winning a silver medal in
the event four years ago.
“Like, just barely hanging on
by a freaking strand of hair,”
were her parting words. “I’m
tired of the food, homesick, tired
of the pressure, a little bit tapped
out. I’m excited to go home.”
The Olympics deflated the
peppiest champion here. That’s
how cold the vibe could be. So
the moments of warmth were
critical.
For all the intense competition
for scarce prizes, there weren’t
many foes. In the women’s
1 0-kilometer classical race,back at Select Specialty Hospital
in Madison, Wis., were sending
videos and photos of support
during their breaks fighting the
coronavirus. You heard
speedskater Brittany Bowe
celebrating as if she had won
gold when Erin Jackson
triumphed in the 500 meters.
Jackson, the top-ranked
sprinter in the world, had
stumbled and failed to qualify at
the Olympic trials, but Bowe
gave up her spot to guarantee
Jackson made the U.S. team.
Though Bowe later earned a
quota spot to fill out the field, it
was still an incredible sacrifice.
By the end of the Games, Bowe,
who is 33 and competing in her
third Olympics, had earned
bronze in the women’s
1,000 meters, the first individual
Olympic medal of her career.
“I don’t think either of us
knew the magnitude of those
actions,” Bowe said. “The amount
of support and love that we have
received has been really
humbling. In times of so much
division, to see some positivity
on the news and lifting one
another up and supporting each
other, that has been reallykindness.
China tried to pretend. During
the Opening Ceremonies, Beijing
2022 organizers featured Uyghur
cross-country skier Dinigeer
Yilamujiang as a final
torchbearer, spraying unity
propaganda over accusations that
the Chinese government has
committed genocide against the
Muslim ethnic population. It was
both defiant and a commitment
to deception that set a grim tone.
But for those not prone to
credulity, it reinforced skepticism.
In this environment, the
Olympics should have been
doomed. They weren’t. You had
to look away several times, but
amid all the filth and vexation
and heartbreak, there was still a
soul. The thing that makes the
Olympics so durable and
emotionally cleansing broke
through the dismal loop.
You saw it in simple gestures,
in Italy’s Sofia Goggia leaving an
encouraging message on the skis
she lent to a struggling Mikaela
Shiffrin: “FLY MIKA, YOU CAN.”
You felt the emotions of curler/
nurse Nina Roth, even though
she was wearing a mask, as she
shared that staff and patientsChinese government could
consider favorable. You lived a
distorted life, searching for
realness.
It could not be discovered
through sightseeing, which was
limited to virtual tours and
photo op cutouts of the Great
Wall, Summer Palace, Temple of
Heaven and Forbidden City. It
could not be discovered through
interactions on the street, unless
you were really expressive about
waving through a bus window at
residents. Nevertheless,
humanity kept bursting through,
and while it’s not surprising that
people can be good in bleak
settings, it warrants recognition
after all these February days
spent underlining the numerous
systemic local, geopolitical and
sports-specific transgressions
that made this event often seem
like hell’s snow globe.
Bring thousands together for a
shared struggle, and people will
show more than the ability to
endure. They will support each
other. What was real? That spirit.
That benevolence. It had to be
genuine. There’s no faking
BREWER FROM D1
JERRY BREWER
Inside the chilling ‘closed loop,’ moments of human kindness brought us warmth
amateur origins — and that’s fine
because the free market
determines they’re worth
$7.75 billion for NBC to carry
these and the next five Games.
The trickle-down is that, for
athletes to establish themselves
on that same free market, they
must set their clocks to soar
every fourth year. Miss the
window, and it’s back to training
and competing in obscurity.
“One thing the U.S. is really
bad at is only caring about the
Olympics,” said Rosie Brennan, a
cross-country skier who teamed
with Jessie Diggins to finish fifth
in an event in which Diggins won
gold four years ago. That no
doubt adds to the strain here.
Sports always have produced
more losers than winners. It’s
part of the design. Today’s losers,
though, not only seem to be
bearing a heavier burden. Their
suffering somehow lingers
longer than the celebration. The
Olympics should provide kids at
home not only a reason to watch
but a reason to dream. If the
burden of those dreams starts
outweighing their inspiration, it
will be harder and harder to
convince others to pursue their
own.skiers and Norwegian biathletes
— and more — are proof of that.
And yet the miserable images
endure. Shiffrin, for one,
telegraphed all of this over the
past year. During the entirety of
the Games, even as she
methodically and introspectively
— and repeatedly — tried to
explain how she failed to finish
tasks that just weeks ago she
considered rote, I couldn’t shake
a conversation we had long
before the Olympics. This was
last fall, when I brought up the
Olympics, and she asked whether
I was familiar with the Netflix
series “Stranger Things” and its
monster antagonist, the
Demogorgon. I was not.
“It’s like the Demogorgon is
trying to pound in on your house
and your brain and everything,”
Shiffrin said of the Olympics.
“You’re trying your best to keep it
out and keep away from that
pressure because it’s a really,
really uncomfortable place to be.”
She was speaking for herself
about her own demons, and
there are gold medal winners
who might raise an eyebrow and
say, “What?” But it’s also clear
she’s not alone. The Olympics are
so far removed from their pure,the cameras, beaming back an
image of absolute dejection and
distress. Ten minutes became 20.
Do you remember who won gold
in the race?
The agony of defeat has been
part of this equation for
generations. But there’s
something more happening here.
Sports are supposed to build us
up, not break us down. The
pandemic, so close to entering its
third year, certainly has worn on
people in ways both individual
and collective. But it’s also clear
that the issues that emerged
from these past two Olympics
will continue even as the
coronavirus (hopefully) recedes.
Reaching the Olympics — in
any sport, as a medal contender
or otherwise — requires
uncommon dedication and
diligence. There have to be
lessons and joy in that journey
even if there isn’t a podium at the
end of it because, if not, why
make the commitment?
But the journey also is wearing
down and spitting out athletes.
Not everyone, of course, and
there are still performances that
excite the senses and fill the
heart. Chen, Kim, Jacobellis, an
entire team of Swiss Alpinetales were different, but there’s a
theme. Whatever led to Valieva’s
harrowing free skate Thursday —
whether it was the public
unspooling of a flawed testing
process or the consequence of a
Russian sports system with a
history of doping — the cameras
stayed on the 15-year-old, first as
she wobbled across the ice and
then as she absolutely dissolved
into a river of tears. With so
much of her life remaining, what
will become of her?
“I’m sorry, but it’s just
unbearable,” Katarina Witt, the
German gold medalist from 1984
and 1988, said on television in
her home country. “... I find that
she has been thrown before the
whole world to be devoured.”
Shiffrin isn’t the product of
such a system, but the camera
lingered still. We no longer are
subjected to replay after replay of
physical injuries — see the
broken leg suffered by American
skier Nina O’Brien at the last
gates of last week’s giant slalom.
But mental anguish is somehow
fair game. So as Shiffrin sat on
the mountainside after a failed
run of slalom — a discipline she
essentially owns, a race in which
she once won gold — there werelast summer’s pandemic-
postponed Tokyo Games were
provided by Simone Biles, who
chose her mental health and
physical well-being over the task
she had trained for: flipping and
leaping in gymnastics. She was
lauded for doing so and
appropriately so. She shared the
stage with tennis star Naomi
Osaka, not because Osaka
diligently and determinedly
pursued gold for the host
country from which her mother
hails but because she arrived in
Japan very publicly examining
her own mental well-being.
Yes, Katie Ledecky and Caeleb
Dressel shone in the pool, and a
long list of Americans excelled
on the track, and Sunisa Lee
boldly and beautifully stepped
into a vacancy to secure the
gymnastics all-around gold. But
no gold-winning performance
could overtake Biles’s story in
importance and resonance, not
only because she had been
abused by the team doctor that
USA Gymnastics harbored for
years but because she stood up to
the system that allowed that to
happen — and therefore stood up
for herself.
Here, the characters and theirbeijing — It
would be
wonderful if the
image that
resonated from
the Beijing
Olympics was, say,
Chloe Kim’s
beaming face
after she soared to another gold
medal. Or Nathan Chen’s
execution of five quadruple
jumps as he inspired and
astounded with his skating. Or
Lindsey Jacobellis finally
shedding the burdens of past
letdowns with a career-capping
gold of her own.
The unfortunate reality is
those are footnotes. As the
Beijing Games close, they are
stained by Kamila Valieva’s tears.
They are marked by Mikaela
Shiffrin’s befuddlement. They are
defined not as much by what was
achieved as by what wasn’t.
After what has transpired over
one Summer and one Winter
Games, staged all of seven
months apart, what would make
a parent encourage her child to
pursue an Olympic dream?
Faster, higher, stronger — and
sadder.
The signature moments from
At these Games, the thrill of victory was overshadowed by the agony of defeat
Barry
Svrluga
TOM PENNINGTON/GETTY IMAGESU.S. skier Mikaela Shiffrin c onsoles Switzerland’s Priska Nufer after a fall during the women’s slalom. “It’s a really, really uncomfortable place to be,” Shiffrin said of the pressure faced by athletes at the Games.