The spotlight is hot and unrelenting for those Olympic figure skaters. If you’re a downhill skier and you crash or miss a gate, your race is over. If you’re a speed skater and you wipe out on the oval track, you’re finished. But if you’re a figure skater and you mess up or fall, you have to keep going.
We were watching the 21-year-old skating phenom Ilia Malinin perform his individual free skate the other night. He’s already considered one of the greatest skaters of all time, performing jumps and leaps that no other skater can attempt. But in the biggest moment of his career, he made mistakes, he fell twice, he completely blundered his routine.
After he fell for the first time, I said, “Imagine how hard it is to keep going after that. How do you do it?”
Malinin kept going. He stumbled and blundered through his entire four-minute program, which must have felt like four years out on the ice alone with millions of eyes watching him, and when he finished, he covered his face with his hands.
There’s a term in sports when you fail to live up to expectations, when the enormous pressure to perform gets the better of you: The moment was too big for him.
What a horrible feeling to underperform in a pivotal moment. How devastating it can be to your wellbeing. I can think of a certain field goal kicker who missed a makeable game-winning field goal for the Bills in the Super Bowl in 1992. As disappointed as he was, Scott Norwood said he did not allow that failure to define him—although I can imagine how different his life would have been had he made that kick. He’d be immortalized in Buffalo. There would be Scott Norwood statues and Scott Norward Park and Scott Norwood Boulevard.
The contemporary version of the Bills has also shown its susceptibility to getting tight and losing in big moments. But I’m not going down that rabbit hole in this post.
I was never good enough at any sport at any level to be in a moment that could prove to be too big for me or be my crowning glory. I don’t know the feeling.
But I’ve had a few moments of agony and ecstasy as I look back on parts of my career. I remember when I first moved to Santa Cruz and was job hunting, I managed to land an interview at a respected weekly newspaper. We were running short of money and I really needed the job.
The day of the interview was exceptionally and unseasonably hot and it took place in the stuffy, un-airconditioned (no one had air conditioning in Santa Cruz) second-floor office of the editor.
My first mistake was wearing a button down shirt and a tie (no one wore ties in California). I sat across from the editor (jeans and Hawaiian shirt) and showed him my portfolio of newspapers that I had designed and edited from my previous job back east.
He started questioning me, in fact challenging me on an unconventional front-page layout I’d done. Boy was it hot. I began to sweat, not just a little. A lot. A river was rolling down my face. My shirt was sticking to me. At one point, the editor offered me a box of tissues.
It was a regular Albert Brooks performance from the film Broadcast News. His dream was to become a news anchor, and this is what happened when he got his chance:
Of course I didn’t get the job (neither did Albert Brooks). I was just relieved to get out of that office before I collapsed from dehydration. That moment, that heat, that pressure—it was too big for me.
Fast forward a number of years and I’ve got my first job in the corporate world working for a software company. I’m the marketing manager for the firm’s first internet-based mapping product. It’s going to be introduced at a company meeting, and the product manager asked if I would give the presentation.
I had classroom teaching experience but not business presentation experience. I was good at making slides and good at telling a story—a certain kind of story: the kind I can write, and rewrite, and edit, and work on until it’s just the way it needs to be. I rehearsed over and over until I could tell the story without notes and with perfectly placed transitions between slides.
When my name got called, I walked up to the podium and faced the hundreds of people gathered, including the CEO and the entire executive team. Everyone was anticipating something big because this was an important strategic direction for the company.
Somehow, I delivered. I soared through my presentation without a bump or a scratch, my slides were perfect, and I received an actual standing ovation from the entire room. My fifteen minutes of fame. I’ll admit, it felt good.
Neither of these situations defined me. Neither had nearly the stakes that Malinin faced on the Olympic ice. I hope he comes back from his defeat stronger than ever. He’s so young. So talented. I believe he will come back and be better for it.
