‘It hurts more than it feels good’: Mikaela Shiffrin and the pressure to keep winning
Once again, Mikaela Shiffrin surprised the world with her third "Did Not Finish" at the 2022 Winter Olympics.
In position to finally win her first Beijing medal after finishing fifth in the downhill portion of the Alpine combined Thursday, Shiffrin skied off the course some 10 seconds into the slalom run. After recording three Did Not Finishes over a four-year span, she had three in 11 days in Beijing.
As one of the best technical skiers, Shiffrin's performance was shocking. But people didn't just react to her loss with sadness or surprise; they also spewed anger and hate.
On Friday, Shiffrin responded to criticisms that she "can't handle the pressure" or has "gone off the deep end" with a lengthy statement about how she will rebound.
"Get up because you can, because you like what you do when its not infested with the people who have so much apparent hate for you. Just get up. It's not always easy, but it's also not the end of the world to fail. Fail twice. Fail 5 times. At the Olympics (Enter me...)," she wrote.
'I don't really understand it': Mikaela Shiffrin skis out in slalom run of combined, plans to race in team event
"Why do I keep coming back? Gosh knows it hurts more than it feels good lately. I come back because those first 9 turns today were spectacular, really heaven. That's where I'm meant to be and I'm stubborn. ... So let's go for some team event training tomorrow, and then the final alpine race of this Olympics on Saturday."
Fans praised Shiffrin for her perseverance, but experts say the hate is all too common, especially from those who don't understand our athletes' pressure to be the best.
"There's already so much pressure for the Olympics because all eyes are on you … but it wasn't just the normal Olympics this year. There was a lot of uncertainty about whether and how they would happen," says Sian Beilock, president of Barnard College at Columbia University and a cognitive scientist who specializes in sports psychology. "We know succeeding in the public eye is great, but failing can be extremely difficult."
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The problematic way we treat our heroes
Especially for the Olympics, it's common for fans to feel disappointment and frustration toward our athletes who lose. We expect them to be represent our country by constantly winning, but at the same time, we shame them when they crumble under the pressure.
This hate can be debilitating. Take, for instance, Zhu Yi, the 19-year-old U.S.-born figure skater competing for China, and the harsh online criticism she received for falling. According to CNN, the hashtag "Zhu Yi Has Fallen" reached 200 million views on the social media website Weibo.
"I just hope that from now on, more people will understand the situation before they go on the internet and express their feelings," Zhu said Tuesday.
However, the reality is no one is invincible, and anyone – including top-notch athletes like Shiffrin – can have bad days.
"We tend to be our own worst critics and tend to expect high levels of performance from ourselves and what this shows is no one is super human," Beilock says.
More: US-born Chinese figure skater Zhu Yi says online criticism 'did hurt me a little bit'
The fixation on athletes' failures, misery is dangerous
Beilock says we have a "one-dimensional" view of athletes. It's assumed that their worth revolves around their athletic abilities, and it's shortsighted to pretend they aren't vulnerable humans capable of messing up.
"Athletes aren't immune to mental health issues. They face pressures just like you and me, and they've been dealing with the pandemic for the last two years just like you and me," Beilock says.
For Shiffrin, the 2022 Winter Games mark her first Olympics without her father.
“Right now, I would really like to call him, so that doesn’t make it easier,” Shiffrin said last week, breaking down as she spoke of her father, who died in 2020.
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Keith Kaufman, a clinical sports psychologist, says it's no surprise that "the media tends to want to focus on the drama, which may seem like it makes for good television, but it adds another layer to the distress that an athlete is experiencing.
"We have a bias towards the negative, and sometimes when we see someone whom we regard as a hero and see them struggling, we take some solace in that. That they're human too."
Experts say people have a tendency to forget athletes' accomplishments. For instance, Shiffrin has won an Olympic gold medal not once, but twice.
"My skiing has been really solid,” Shiffrin said of her performance. “When there is pressure and there’s some nerves and the feeling that I want to do well, I always just go back to that fundamental idea that good skiing will be there for me."
How can we support Olympic athletes who are struggling?
Though more athletes have recently been open about their vulnerability, sports culture emphasizes discipline, and Kaufman says we need to shift our mindset to focus more broadly on their accomplishments.
Instead of obsessing over medals, Kaufman says, we should appreciate the hard work and endurance that goes into the training.
"There's still a bias toward athletes being invincible, pushing through and toughing it out," he says.
"We should take a more process-oriented approach and value the complexities of the sport, instead of reducing something so complex to something as simple as, 'Did they win a gold medal or not?'"
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Contributing: Nancy Armour