Faster. Higher. Stronger. Together.

Why we understand the Olympics' flaws — and keep falling in love anyway

Alysa Liu jumps to the sky. (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)

There are any number of reasons to dislike the Olympics. There’s the rank corruption at the heart of the IOC. There’s the commercialism that feeds on the inspiring hope of Citius, Altius, Fortius — Communiter … Faster, Higher, Stronger — Together. There are the stage parents and coaches, perhaps you know some, who push their children beyond their capabilities and happiness in search of eternal glory.

There are any number of reasons …

… and then you watch Alysa Liu skate.

“That’s what I’m #%@$& talking about!” she shouts into the camera when her skate is done, and she is glowing like the sun, she is a fireworks show of joy, and dammit, there are any number of reasons but maybe your heart, like the Grinch’s heart, grows three sizes. Because she did it.

That’s the thing. She did it. Her story is her story — she won the U.S. championship at 13, hated the sport enough to quit at 16, went on a ski trip that made her feel so happy that she thought about coming back, returned on her own terms where she made all the decisions about music and routines and outfits and training schedule, returned to the Olympics with the singular goal of being her best self, medals or not — and then on the night she performed as if in a dream.

“That’s what I’m #%@$& talking about!” she shouted because, well, that’s what she was #%@$& talking about. That’s all she wanted. She didn’t know that she would win the gold medal, and I deeply believe her when she says that she didn’t care. She was so clearly rooting for the next two skaters, both from Japan, the ones who could have taken the gold from her.

“What I needed,” she told reporters, “was the stage.”

There are any number of reasons to dislike the Olympics …

… and then you watch Johannes Høsflot Klæbo climb the final hill in the longest race at the Olympics, the 50-kilometer cross-country ski. Have you ever cross-country skied? I did once. I was 12. Olympian Bill Koch came to our school for some reason, and we all went to a nearby park, and he taught us how to ski in the Cleveland snow.

All I really remember is the exhaustion. You know how in some video games — I don’t know if this is still true, but it used to be back in the old days of video games — doing certain things would make a character’s exhaustion level go down twice as fast? That was cross-country skiing. Trying to make it up one tiny hill in Cain Park depleted me for days.

Now, here’s Klæbo — already the winner of 10 Olympic gold medals, five at these Olympics — and he and fellow Norway star Martin Loewstroem Nyenget go into that final hill together, a virtual tie, and Klæbo knows what’s about to happen, Nyenget knows what’s about to happen, fans who have been paying attention know what’s about to happen, but that doesn’t make it any less of a miracle.

Klæbo ascends. He doesn’t just ascend the Olympic hill. He ascends into another dimension. He ascends the way a fighter jet does. He leaves Nyenget back in the distance, almost too far back to see — “I’m starting to believe maybe he’s a machine,” Nyenget would say — and he coasts to the finish line for another gold, taking only an instant to look back the way jockey Ron Turcotte looked back when riding Secretariat at the Belmont.

“It’s hard to find the right words,” Klæbo said when it was done, and this is because there are no words.

There are any number of reasons to dislike the Olympics …

… and then you watch those snowboarders and freestylers celebrate each other at the bottom of the hill.

“You rule!”

“No, YOU rule!”

I can’t follow it all. The rules do not penetrate. The jumps all look impossible and all look the same. “Oh my gosh, she did a 1540 triple flip milk the cow muffler change Shreveport Luberg!” the announcer shouts the way someone might shout “That’s Matthew McConaughey!” in a mall, and I blink in disbelief, and then it’s “Holy cow, I can’t even believe this, he did a 1760 double twist dial the parents caught in traffic Andy Samberg filloffeau,” and the two jumps look identical to me, and I blink in disbelief.

But the reaction at the bottom of the hill, that I get. There they are, these competitors, all different ages, all different countries, purportedly fighting for the same medals, and they are giddy with joy when they see someone else do something mind-blowing, and it feels less like a competition and more like members of a band challenging each other to take the music just a little bit higher.

Yes, again, there are any number of reasons to dislike the Olympics …

… and then you see Mikaela Shiffrin at the bottom of the hill after she faced the nerves and the pressure and moment and skied her heart out — “the stronger the heartbeat, the more heart,” she would say. She closed her eyes and kneeled and put her head on her knees and went inside herself.

“What were you releasing in that moment?” the NBC reporter asked her just moments later.

She was not ready to answer. She is 30 years old, the most decorated alpine skier ever, winner of more than 100 World Cup races, and she had come to these Olympics on a personal journey, to ski her best again, after the injuries, after the disappointments, after the loss of her father a few years earlier, after it all.

And she had done it.

She paused. “Um,” she said. She paused again. “Honestly,” she said. She paused again.

And then she began to cry.

“I mean,” she finally said, “I was trying to talk to my Dad.”

She paused again, cried a little more, and then said, “I don’t know. This is a moment I’ve been pretty scared of for a really long time. Because I don’t really … every new experience in life is an experience that he’s not here to see, not in person.”

And then she paused again, only now she smiled a little.

“And I figured — might as well have a spiritual moment … and just … I don’t know … just … think about him. You know?”

Yes. We know. We feel. We rise. We fall. We triumph. We falter. And we know. There are reasons to be cynical. There are reasons to lose faith. And still, we know.