The Freedom Beyond the Gold MedalsRead Time 10 min

If you’ve been reading this column for a while, you may remember that I am captivated by the Olympics. For two weeks every other year, I abruptly shift from complete apathy toward any televised sports, to glued to the screen. Admittedly, my favorite sports are always the artistic ones — gymnastics, figure skating, slopstyle skiing and snowboarding, etc. — but as long as it starts playing after the Olympic theme, I’ll be into it.

That said, the bulk of my time still goes to figure skating.

This year, in the Olympic arcs of the American skaters, the dangers of achievement-based culture were on full display. At the top of the leader board going into the competitions, there was Ilia Malinin. He was so overwhelmingly the favorite that the solitary competitor expected to even challenge him was still considered a long shot. He underperformed in the team event but still did well enough to secure his team the gold. Everyone expected that, in the solo competition, his full power would be unleashed. Instead, he crumbled. Sometimes you need the assistance of the commentators to know how well a skater is doing. That was not the case with Ilia. At the end of a catastrophic skate, he fully broke down in disappointed tears. I want to be clear that I feel nothing but compassion for him. He is 21 and carried into his first Olympics an unbelievable amount of expectation to perform. It is overwhelmingly clear that he has all the technical skills to raise him head and shoulders above his competitors. It was the mental onslaught that took him down.

Less overwhelmingly the favorite, but still expected to excel, was Amber Glenn. Her stumble was much less obvious to the untrained eye, a single swap out of a triple for a double jump took her off the podium.

I kept remembering the greatest Olympic athletes in my memory, Michael Phelps and Simone Biles, and how striking it is that both of them have turned their star power visibility primarily to mental health.

We need people who can climb to the height of human achievement. We need it because it is inspiring and that inspiration is good and important. We also need it because they’re the only people who can come back and tell us that that is not what makes you happy.

There were two other American figure skaters whose performances highlighted the flipside.

Maxim Naumov is the son of two Olympic figure skaters who both died in the plane crash over Washington, D.C., last January. With them as his coaches, he had spent his whole life looking forward to the Olympics. In the wake of their deaths, he considered leaving skating behind. Instead, he decided to honor their memories by persevering in the sport they loved and the project they had worked on together. He wears a cross around his neck that he received at his Baptism, he makes the sign of the cross before his routines, and as he waits for his scores, he holds a picture of him with his parents, the first time he ever skated. He was never considered a real contender for the medals, but he skated on Olympic ice, executed well, and inspired the world with his perseverance and his character.

Alysa Liu was 16 years old when she retired from figure skating after the Beijing Olympics. Then she was on a ski trip with her friends where she had so much fun that it occurred to her “Maybe figure skating could be this fun.” She came back to the sport with a new freedom and a startling depth of wisdom for a 20-year-old, telling reporters that she no longer feels like her life depends on her success. Joyful and unconcerned with the medal outcome, she won the gold.

It is a good thing to pursue excellence. The work and the sacrifice of Olympic athletes striving for excellence in their field can be an inspiration toward the excellence of virtue that we as Catholics desire. But a distortion can slip in whenever we allow the achievement of that excellence to be the foundation of our identity. We are beloved children of the Father who loves us, and that identity does not change depending on how well we execute our goals. We seek excellence because he loves us and he wants the best for us and because our growth in virtue makes more space for him to work in our lives. But our identity as beloved child does not grow or wane depending on how well we are doing when we achieve our goals. And resting on the secure foundation of that reality, we have greater freedom to try and fail and grow. We might even find that, like Alysa Liu, when our identity does not depend on how well we perform, excellence blossoms in us.

None of this in any way lessens my love for the Olympics. On the contrary, I think the games set themselves up to present a broad and — for all the volumes of critical commentary — unpredictable range of the human experience. The media competes for heartwarming stories (instead of its usual fare of shocking ones), and the trajectory of athletes who have dedicated their lives to their sport tells us heartwarming and heartbreaking stories that ultimately all affirm the beautiful mystery of what it means to be human.

I think we from our couches are bound, first and foremost, to honor the dignity and the sacrifice of the athletes. If all we can do is critique, it’s something wrong with us, not them. But following on that foundation, we have the opportunity to learn from all of them.