Winter sports have drawn me in ever since I was a little kid growing up in Michigan. I've been a hockey fan all my life, and skiing and snowboarding were my sports throughout my childhood. When I got into snow sports as a young teenager, life got better for me. I had finally discovered sports that I enjoyed and in which I excelled. My self confidence improved, I started doing better in school, and I became better at connecting with people. The Winter Olympics have always been cool to watch. I'm not a religious watcher because I'm not much of a TV person in general. Plus I'd rather be participating in the sports than watching other people do them on TV, but nevertheless, I enjoy watching the athletes tear it up.
The world has produced some exceptionally talented winter sport athletes over the decades, and so far, the 2026 Winter Olympics have been eventful. I'd like to discuss two takeaways from the Winter Olympics so far that hit close to home with me, and I believe showcase some valuable life lessons. First of all, I love the story about Chloe Kim and Choi Ga-on. For those who don't know who they are, Chloe Kim is a 25-year-old professional snowboarder from Southern California. She spent her early years snowboarding at Mountain High, Big Bear, and in the Swiss Alps before returning to California and training at Mammoth Mountain. She has won two Olympic gold medals and several other awards. Despite dislocating her shoulder during training season, she was heavily favored to win a third consecutive gold medal at this year's Winter Olympics in Cortina. Now, let's bring Choi Ga-on into the picture. Choi is a 17-year-old professional snowboarder from South Korea. She arrived in Cortina for the Olympics with a Winter X Games gold medal and a couple of wins in halfpipe World Cup events on her resume. In the end, Chloe Kim ended up taking home the silver medal and Choi Ga-on clinched the gold medal for women's halfpipe snowboarding. Some media outlets spun the story into Chloe Kim getting 'beaten' by Choi Ga-on and 'settling for a silver medal'. But Chloe and Choi set the record straight pretty quickly. After Choi won, videos and pictures surfaced of the two of them hugging each other and taking photos together with their medals. It turned out Choi regarded Chloe as her idol and Chloe had mentored Choi for many years. Despite the only 8-year age gap, Chloe said she felt like a proud mom.
To me, the Chloe Kim and Choi Ga-on story was the feelgood story of the whole Olympics, and quite possibly the whole year so far. It was really cool to see the mutual love and respect they had for each other. In a world where people are constantly tearing each other down and trying to one-up each other, this story was a big breath of fresh air. The life lesson here is it is generally a good thing when your mentees out-do you. If you mentor someone and they compete against you and win, that should be the best possible outcome. As a dad of a toddler, I feel like this also applies to parents and their kids. Why wouldn't parents want their kids to be better than them? I've heard too many stories about mentors talking shit about their mentees and saying they were never worth a damn when they become their competition and too many parents becoming resentful towards their kids if they do better than them. It's hard for me to understand. I love seeing people I've mentored succeed, and I hope that my son, Aidan, out-does me in every way possible.
My second takeaway so far for me from the Winter Olympics is the story of Ilia Malinin. For those who don't know who he is, Ilia is an American professional figure skater from Virginia. Both of his parents are former professional figure skaters from Russia who completed for Uzbekistan. Ilia holds several records in the world of professional figure skating, and at only 21-years-old, he is the only skater to successfully land a quadruple axel on numerous occasions. That's really freaking hard. These achievements have earned him the nick name 'The Quad God' in some circles. Ilia participated in this year's winter Olympics, and was heavily favored to win the gold medal for the men's free skate competition. Unfortunately, he had several mishaps during his performance, including two falls while attempting various quadruple stunts. He fell in the ranks to 8th place, and didn't end up taking home a medal as an individual athlete. This sent a wave of shock through his fan base. No one faulted him for what happened, but it was a major upset. Ilia would state after the event that he felt like he crumbled under the pressure of being placed so high on a pedestal as the favored gold medal winner. He stated that the pressure was overwhelming and his mistakes on the ice were caused by psychological factors as opposed to not having enough training. To quote him, he further drove his point home by saying "it's not like any other competition. It's the Olympics".
As Ilia continues to process what happened to him on the ice, I have some thoughts of my own. The life lesson here is one bad performance doesn't define who you are as an athlete. And this even goes beyond sports. You can be a professional violinist in an orchestra and give a flawed performance. It doesn't mean your still not a talented violinist. Or you could be a professional chef and have a rough night in the kitchen. It doesn't mean you still aren't a great chef. Good parents make mistakes with their kids sometimes. It doesn't mean they aren't good parents. Sometimes the constant pressure of being the best can create a lot of negative psychological thoughts of potential failure that can send people into a tailspin. No matter what their craft is, professionals have off days, just like the rest of us. I don't always have my best performance when I run races. In fact, just about all the times that I've DNF'ed an ultramarathon or had bad races were the end result of not only having an off day, but also the negative thoughts taking over my mind because I was having an off day. We can't always be at our best. And clearly, Ilia wasn't at his best at this year's Winter Olympics. It doesn't mean that a bad skating performance makes him a bad skater.
That being said, I'm excited for what the final week of the 2026 Winter Olympics has in store for us. I'm hoping for more feelgood stories because we need more of those in the media these days. And when this is all over, I'm pretty sure that Chloe, Choi, and Ilia will be back in 2030 to kick some more ass.
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