March 2nd 2010

What We Can Learn from this Year’s Olympians

Ashleigh McIvor, Canada's Olympic ski queen, told a reporter last week that the ski cross techniques that won her a gold medal were learned by "chasing the boys down the hills" of her native Whistler and Cypress Mountains.

Last week, the Canadian boys were chasing her and other amazing female Canadians who competed in the 21st Olympic winter games. Canada fielded 43 women and 206 men this year. For the second winter Olympics in a row, the women out-medaled the men.

Canadians are crowing this week about their men’s gold-medal hockey victory over the Americans on Sunday. But for the preceding two weeks, their female athletes were the ones dominating the Canadian media.

(What does this have to do with intimacy? Plenty. Keep reading.)

For more than a decade, Canada has focused attention and money on grooming young female athletes. That is beginning to make a difference.

It showed in athletes like McIvor, who won every ski cross event save one, racing down Cypress Mountain in what I can only describe as a cold, foggy, wet soup.

It also appeared when Canada’s hockey women trounced their American opponents in the game for the gold.

Canadians’ support for their women was perhaps most vividly demonstrated during the amazing performance of figure skater Joannie Rochette. Rochette’s mother, Therese, had died unexpectedly in Vancouver just two days before the competitions that Rochette had trained her whole young life for.

As Rochette cried in her coach’s arms minutes after the first of two events, virtually the entire audience of the 16,000-seat Pacific Coliseum rose to applaud her. Two days later, during the final and longer skate, most of us were on our feet during her whole 4-minute performance and again later when it was announced she had won the bronze medal.

Now, to the subject of intimate relationships.

In love, as in sports, it takes more than good technique to excel. Female Olympians from Canada and other countries remind us of some of the essentials:

1. Hard work – During the five hours of ski cross competition, several athletes fell hard. One was carried away in a stretcher. The rest pushed themselves back up on dangerously icy slopes and continued skiing fast to the last hurdle and beyond, usually waving and grinning even though they knew they had lost that particular match.

I loved what one commentator said about this: “If you don’t crash every once in a while you’re not working hard enough.”

Falling in love is easy. Loving well, like skiing or skating well, is hard. It takes focus, practice and a willingness to get back up after a fall.

2. Sheer Grit – The crashes and extreme training that Olympic women endure do a number on their bodies. Still, they go on. Think about American skier Lindsay Vonn who, despite a serious shin injury, gave all she had to the downhill ski event and clinched the gold medal. McIvor’s shoulder has been dislocated more than 15 times – so often that she taught her skiing buddies how to pop it back into place should it happen on a run.

For these and the other athletes, getting hurt is part of the game. So is learning how to heal, and quitting is almost never an option. The same could be said for real love.

3. Listening to Others – Four years ago, Yu-Na Kim, already an accomplished figure skater, moved from her native Korea to Toronto to begin training with a new coach, Brian Orser, a Canadian and former winner of two silver medals. Last week, Kim won the gold and set a new world record for total points.

Those who seek to be a better romantic partner benefit from seeking out the ear of someone older and more experienced.

4. Listening to Oneself – One of my favorite elements of Olympic scoring is the number given for one’s “personal best,” that is, the highest score an athlete has achieved thus far in a particular event and a marker for self improvement.

It seems helpful to think of relationships this way. To remember that, in the end, it’s not important how our relationships stack up against what other couples have. What’s important is how closely they fit our vision of what we want them to be.

Figure skater Rochette was asked by a reporter whether she skated in order to honor her mother.

Her mother would have wanted her to skate, Rochette replied. But, “I did this first of all for myself because my mother taught me to think of myself first. She always wanted me to be a strong person.”

Bravo, Therese. Bravo, Joannie, and all you other Olympic “girls.”