Carrying the Torch

The Olympics are on their way in all their overproduced pomp, petty nationalism, Bob Costasness, and general asshattery.

I CANNOT WAIT.

The Olympics give us That Moment, when an entire lifetime of training comes down to one vault, one leap, one race. Is he gonna crack? Is she gonna slip? An entire existence focused on one goal only to see it disintegrate before a worldwide audience: Now THAT'S entertainment. Roll out the Combos and the twelve-packs! We're gonna see the lifelong undoing of a fourteen-year-old!

The events of the Summer Games, for the most part, leave out the element of the Crappy Judges. Shame. Crappy Judges make things crappy, but ratchet up the Piss Level, which is always welcome. Because if you’ve been preparing your whole life to do your job well, and you pull it off better than anyone's expected when it mattered the most, what should happen next?

Thaaaaaaaaaaaaats right. Win.

What happens if you don't?

Ask figure skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier. Remember these two? They were The Screwed. After leaping, twisting, and spinning through the best long program of their lives at the Olympic Games, they ended the night standing on the second-place podium. An unreachable two feet above them perched a Russian team that had skated a lovely performance but committed technical errors visible from passing weather balloons.

The Canadians smiled ("Abouuuuuuuuut, eh?") and waved clutches of congratulatory yellow blossoms to a sympathetic crowd and salivating press corps. But the tears shielding Jamie Sale's eyes from a clear view of the Russian flag superseding the Canadian banner also acted as a looking glass: "This wasn't the way… it was supposed to be."

No it wasn't, thanks to a corrupt French judge (shocking!), for one of the few instances in Olympic history, the shattered dreams Sale and Pelletier left behind on the ice that night were gently swept up and awkwardly patched together again with a startling uprising of athletic justice. A week later they were awarded their own gold, and will for the rest of their lives be introduced as Olympic champions.

When Sale and Pelletier marched into the Opening Ceremonies, they could not in their wildest dreams have imagined that they would close out the week sitting at a long table in a press conference, attorneys on one side, coach on the other, and the stare of the world in the middle. This wasn't the way… it was supposed to be.

They may have the gold now, but the price tag attached to it was a nightmare of a medals ceremony and waking up the next morning to see the damn silver thing on the nightstand: "I did my best. I know I won. I know I won. I know how it was supposed to be." For the rest of Sale's and Pelletier's lives, when they recall the capstone of their athletic careers, they will think: Vindication. But first, pain.

Sports are like that.

And life is like that.

And that is the role of sports in life: to reflect, affect, magnify. Every job I didn’t get and every boyfriend you’ve ever dumped was standing up there on that podium. Reach and reach and not-quite-make-it waved to the crowd. We saw and we ached.

The glory, of course, is that that we found another job or a better guy turned up around the corner… but oh, that medals ceremony. That rock-bottom feeling that this isn’t right and it never will be.

If only all of life’s stories ended so happily on that highest step, in that second ceremony, everything smoothed down with an official do-over.

But now we have the comfort that for once, it did.