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Lindsey Vonn won the PyeongChang bronze last night in Alpine downhill. For those who haven’t heard of her, Vonn is the best female skier in American history, and possibly world history. She’s dominated the slopes for more than a decade and has won more World Cup titles than all but one person on the planet. Alpine downhill was her best shot at gold this Olympics, probably her last, and so to many, that bronze medal could be considered a failure.
But if you watch her post-race interviews, you’ll see an emotional athlete who gave it everything she had, and who is finding a way to let that be more than enough: “I wanted to win so much because of him [her grandfather, who passed away in November],” she said through tears, “but I still think I made him proud. Our family never gives up and I never gave up. I kept working hard and I am really proud of this medal and I know he is, too.” Man, that interview got to me. As the Washington Post wrote, “this isn’t the Vonn of 2010 in Vancouver. This Lindsey Vonn is 33 and has been battered, her bones broken, her ligaments torn by the crashes and wear and tear of her sport.” She has a steel rod in one arm. She has a reconstructed ACL (the reason she missed the 2014 Olympics). She’s had to work through back injuries and other assorted wear and tear. And you know what? She freaking did it. She came back and got on the podium in the biggest sporting event in the world. Vonn is now the oldest woman to ever win an alpine skiing medal at the Winter Games, and she’s also now the only female skier to win more than one downhill Olympic medal. I’m a sucker for a good comeback story, and Vonn’s bronze was eight years in the making -- if that’s not a heck of a comeback, I don’t know what is. Obviously I can’t compare my athletic career to Vonn’s, but I know on a personal level how much injuries suck. Especially for an athlete, injuries are the deepest kind of betrayal. Your own body, the powerful vessel you rely on and work so hard to strengthen and temper, bows out of the game, and there’s nothing you can do about it except wait it out. It can be devastating, especially when it’s a severe injury that puts your entire career at stake. It takes an insane amount of both mental and physical fortitude to push through it. I’ve been thinking about my swimming career a lot recently. Partly because this time of year -- the SEC championships -- always makes me nostalgic, but also for other personal reasons. The last race I ever competed in was the 200 backstroke at the 2014 SEC’s. The second I touched the wall, before I even looked up at my time, I started bawling. It was because I was sad that era of my life was coming to a close, sure, but the tears were mostly falling out of happiness and relief. I touched the wall in 1:59.28, coming in 38th place, a completely forgettable time and ranking. But that time was a three-second best, and that 38th place felt like gold to me. Just the fact that I finished -- I FINISHED -- meant so much to me, when so many people said I couldn’t do it. My college swimming career did not go the way I expected, to say the least. I had a breakout freshman year, and then it pretty much went downhill from there. While training for nationals that following summer, I pulled my quadratus lumborum, one of the main muscles in the back. I still competed, but it was terrible. And, because I didn’t give myself time off to heal, I ended up pulling all the muscles on the right side of my back, which led to a muscle imbalance, which led to scoliosis, which led to a dislocated sacrum. My doctors told me I’d probably never be able to train again without severe pain, and my coach wanted me to take a medical release. After a lot of questioning and prayers, I decided I wasn’t ready to give up this sport. It took me two years to rebuild my back, but I was finally healthy coming into my senior year… and then I found out I had torn my hip labrum. After a lot of back and forth, my doctors decided I couldn’t mess my hip up anymore than I already had, so (after a lot of begging on my part) they gave me the green light to keep competing if I thought I could handle the pain. Long story short, I could and I did, and that’s why I couldn’t stop crying at the end of my last race. Despite everything I had been through and everyone who had told me “no,” I was still capable of going a best time, and all that pressure I had put on myself had finally lifted. The era of two-a-days, of physical therapy, of cortisone shots, of wondering if my body was going to make it another week, was coming to an end. I left everything -- and I mean everything -- in the pool, so I couldn’t have been happier with that swim. Truly, I am more proud of that 38th place than I am of being part of our high school relay national record. Again, I want to stress that I’m not in any way comparing my athletic career to Vonn’s, but when she said her bronze medal feels like gold, I understood what she meant. That bronze medal represents all of the doubt, the sacrifices, the perseverance, the work and the pain and the straight up guts it took to make it through the last few years. She should be damn proud of it. Every now and then, a once-in-a-generation athlete comes along who piques your interest in a new sport. Vonn was that athlete for me. I still know very, very little about skiing, but I have followed her career for a while now, and her grit through her injuries inspired me through a lot of my own. Vonn may have missed the gold medal, but she’s still the gold standard in women’s skiing, and I hope she’s holding her head up high.
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About the AuthorConfessions of a failed southern lady. I've got messy hair and a thirsty heart. Writer, photographer, career wanderer. Archives
May 2023
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