Would-be Olympians’ grace even amid disappointment might teach us a thing or two
Confined together as we all are in this time warp, perhaps patience never has been more of a virtue … or at least more desirable to possess.
Beyond the profound suffering of those grappling directly with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic — those afflicted and their loved ones and our heroic healthcare workers — virtually all lives have been distorted by this indeterminate interlude.
It’s unleashed chaos on our coping mechanisms, from support groups to the ability even to grieve properly with funerals and memorials so disrupted by social distancing protocols.
And it’s torn asunder our time-honored rites and celebrations, like proms and graduations and weddings and the sporting events we build our calendars around.
Even if you’re fortunate enough to remain physically healthy in the weeks to come, the dilemma will remain: How best to hurry up and wait?
We all have to navigate our own paths, of course, through our own mindsets and circumstances.
But maybe there’s something we could all appreciate in the perspectives of some whose dreams have been deferred more than most.
At the most basic level, most Olympians and prospective Olympians had been looking toward the 2020 Tokyo Games for at least four years.
“I’ve thought about Tokyo basically every day since whatever day I raced that (Olympic) final in Rio,” said steeplechaser Courtney Frerichs, a native of Nixa, Missouri, who attended UMKC before transferring to New Mexico.
For the now 27-year-old who finished 11th in Rio before winning silver in the 2017 World Championships, the Tokyo Olympics would arrive right in the prime of her career. She and her husband, Griffin Humphreys of Columbia, Missouri, made many decisions around that.
“It’s kind of like we got to the bell lap of this Olympic cycle (only to be told), ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, just kidding — you have another mile,’” she said in a phone interview from her home in Oregon Tuesday.
She shed tears last week, trying to process the sense of a lost year as an elite athlete with “a very real expiration date.” And she thinks it’s important to give yourself permission to be upset about losing something you’re passionate about.
But she also has resolved a lot already, as she posted succinctly on Twitter the other day:
“Now, more than ever, we are one team. #playinside #playfortheworld.”
Embracing the big picture can’t be an easy place to get to for Olympic contenders, deprived of a driving force in their lives that tends to be a major part of their identities.
While many Olympians are far more multifaceted and conscious of the broader world than some might think, this nonetheless is a certain sort of misery of its own for them.
“Just because I’m willing to put (safety) first doesn’t mean I don’t feel that pain,” wrestler J’den Cox said in a phone interview Monday from Colorado Springs. “But at the same time there are just more important things to put first. … People have things a lot worse than our inability to compete.”
True. But this outlook means all the more because it’s anything but a whim for would-be local Olympic returnees such as Cox (Columbia, Missouri), Frerichs and Amy Hastings Cragg (Leavenworth, Kansas).
Or first-time hopefuls such as pole vaulter Chris Nilsen (Park Hill High) and GAGE Center (Blue Springs) gymnasts Leanne Wong, Kara Eaker and Aleah Finnegan.
From the vagueness about the status of trials in their sports to the looming cancellation or postponement of the Olympics, the last few months had been disorienting and disconcerting.
“Once that was kind of resolved, you could put a plan in place … (and) start working backwards from that,” Cragg, a two-time Olympian, said by phone Tuesday from her home not far from Frerichs in Oregon.
For that matter, she added, the discipline possessed by athletes lends itself to attacking what’s important now: putting their heads down and working toward the goal of “separating ourselves” and doing it as well as possible.
“That’s the goal,” said Cragg, who misses running with others. “And it involves everyone.”
When the Games finally were postponed last week (with the new scheduled start of July 23, 2021 announced Monday), no doubt each felt at least anguished in their own way.
But there also are substantial common denominators in many of their responses, from the vital need to be adaptable (coming from some of the most rigidly scheduled people on Earth) to the crucial view that we all need to take to heed to get through this.
Even when I spoke with Cox a few weeks ago, before the postponement, he had reconciled the bigger picture: “You could never give me enough gold medals or whatever to choose my own success over someone else’s life or ability to breathe.”
When we spoke Monday, the two-time world champion and 2016 Olympic bronze medalist was all the more at peace about it and appreciated the clarity of the postponement … even as he makes adjustments to stay in shape unable to hit the mats.
Training on his own out of his garage and in a park across the street, he’s added such creative touches as going for a short trail run carrying a barbell and two 45-pound weights (135 pounds total) as if he were preparing to do a squat.
“It was interesting telling people, ‘Excuse me,’” he said, laughing and adding, “I can’t really focus on the way I wish things were. I have to focus on what I can do now to prepare me for later.”
Fine words to live by in this moment that were essentially shared and affirmed by others in much the same position.
In a phone interview last week from Vermillion, where he competed for the University of South Dakota, Nilsen said he was concerned a lot of people weren’t taking the pandemic seriously enough and that this development was about “chess, not checkers.”
“As much as it does hurt, I’m glad (the International Olympic Committee) is prioritizing the safety and health of the athletes,” said Nilsen, a three-time NCAA champion who just last month broke the NCAA indoor record (19 feet 5.5 inches). “I think it’s going to be better in the long run.”
Like Cox, he’s also had to do some adapting with his campus and facilities closed down. So … no track to run on?
“In South Dakota,” he said, “we do not have a shortage of plateaus and flat areas.”
In the case of Frerichs, this came at a time when she’s been working to to focus more on process than outcome. That’s quite a transition for someone who wants to see the results.
“I’ve been trying to tell myself what better way to practice that than the time right now,” she said with a laugh.
Accordingly, she’s thought about how lucky she is to still be supported by Nike to pursue what she loves even as so many are losing jobs.
Halfway through earning her master’s degree in community health and looking into resuming that, she thinks about a friend battling cancer and the loss of her grandfather a few months ago as crucial reminders of the urgency of these measures to minimize the losses of loved ones.
And she’s thought about integrating this time into her life as a rare chance to address what she calls her “weaknesses” in the sport.
That’s a form of mindfulness she figures is a good thing “just kind of in life” right now, too.
“We always talk about the journey of things,” she said.
A journey unlike anything we’ve known before.
“It’s not a bad thing to take a step back and breathe ...,” Cox said. “There’s a lot you can learn about yourself in all this. Or a lot we’re going to learn about ourselves in all of this.”
Including this: If prospective Olympians can step back and make the best of the wait, maybe that can help more of us think that way, too.
This story was originally published March 31, 2020 at 4:49 PM.