Dare to fly
...dare to crash.
Can you hear them in the air? Have you sensed them, too? I’ve been waking up to bleats all week as GOATS have dominated the headlines. Tragic GOATS and comeback GOATS, there have been a plenty. An attempt was made to rectify Lindsey Vonn’s horrific fall at the winter Olympics by giving us back Serena Williams who will be eligible to play professional tennis again from the 22nd of February. You lose them, you gain them; Apollo giveth, Apollo taketh away.
On Sunday, Lindsey Vonn crashed 13 seconds into her race at the winter Olympics and had to be airlifted by a helicopter in bone-chilling scenes where you could hear her scream in pain. She suffered a complex tibia fracture that will require surgery (possibly multiple) and while injuries are part of the deal with the downhill skiing devil a bigger discussion surrounded Lindsey’s fall with a considerable backlash accompanying it.
Vonn tore her ACL in another downhill crash only a week prior to that fateful fall at the winter Olympics. She decided to give it a go despite it all. In case you’re not familiar with the injury, the ACL basically attaches the tibia to the knee (clearly not a doctor here) but I did suffer a tear of the ACL myself (still no expert but gaining ground) when I was 19 years old and it took me exactly nine months to the day to enter (and complete) another tennis competition after tearing my ACL. Lindsey Vonn is not 19 years old, in fact, she’s 41. What a 19 year-old can’t heal in a week, a 41 year-old certainly can’t either.
And yet, Lindsey tried. It’s important to state that the fall didn’t really have anything to do with the torn ACL. Vonn straddled one of the slalom poles with her arm and lost balance in the aftermath. I have used my body as a tool on demand for many years myself and so I feel confident enough to say that nurturing a significant injury like a torn ACL in the same body that you’re asking to perform at the highest level of world class athleticism comes with a certain kind of risk. Your brain works through thousands of stimuli when you urge your tool to perform at outlandish highs. It’s like a computer assessing wind, air pressure, muscle strain, tiredness of body, exhaustion of focus, trajectory of tennis ball (in my case), spin, rotation, etc., let alone at the pace downhill skiers are going, and maybe (BIG EMPHASIS ON MAYBE), but maybe one of the pieces of information Lindsey’s brain was computing was the torn ACL and it left other parts vulnerable for error. It’s like finishing your important presentation on a deadline but also the house is on fire.
Now, this is in no way supposed to be a reproach. I’m actually gearing up for it to be the contrary. Lindsey Vonn would have never become Lindsey Vonn if she hadn’t dared fate over and over again. If she hadn’t thrown down the gauntlet to life a couple of times and got away with it. The GOATS in all sports have become GOATS because they don’t buy common human conceptions, because they make the impossible possible. They don’t accept that an ACL needs nine months to heal. They want more, they get more and eventually, they get used to life bowing its head to them - not the other way around.
24 major titles for Novak? Come on. Scoring 38 points in the NBA Finals with the flu, Michael? Winning Wimbledon at 17 years old, Boris Becker? Winning the Golden Slam, Steffi Graf?
As you can see, to me, GOATS are athletes who make the impossible possible, who dare to ask fate for more than a normal human being should. Not necessarily those who have won the most titles.
Which brings me back to Lindsey Vonn and the backlash she got after falling on Sunday.
“How dare she race a week after tearing her ACL?”
The discomfort people feel about Lindsey’s decision to race despite the torn ACL, regular folks like you and me, is precisely said audacity to look life in the eye and say: Come on. We inherently, deep down in our gut, know that life wins in the end - no matter how much we try it. Since the biggest part of life is death. And despite what tech bros from Silicon Valley tell you: We will all die. Life breaks us all. Death always wins. So, to ask the question of how far it will let you go feels to us dashing and bold and, dare I say it, wrong.
It’s good to sit in the discomfort for a little bit but it’s more important to remind ourselves that if humankind had never dared to ask for more, we would still be playing with wooden racquets trying to strike white tennis balls nobody can see and I would have still been on a ship somewhere on the Indian Ocean coming back from Australia writing yearning letters in ink to my loved ones (which, now that I say it, sounds kind of awesome).
Let’s take the bleats of another GOAT Serena Williams along those same lines. Maybe, she’ll just come back to have a last hooray in doubles with her sister Venus. Maybe, she will ask for more. Maybe, it's all been a game. Whichever way it is, let’s hope Apollo is in a better mood for Serena’s possible comeback than he was on Sunday when Lindsey fell. Let us live a little, Apollo, keep your wrath to yourself (for now).
Things that make happy:
Between Heated Rivalry and toothless men with squashed in noses, Ice Hockey is having a moment in pop culture right now. My favourite thing about Ice Hockey, however, is not that I can barely see the puck when they play (trust me, I try) but their warm-ups instead. Please enjoy:
Things that make me unhappy:
A true victim to the strange mix of my literary/pop culture/tennis inspired social media algorithms, I felt an urgent need to see Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights yesterday, a mere day after it premiered in Germany. What can I say, it was not it. I wouldn’t go as far as to call it bad but it is, unfortunately, pretty dull. Margot Robbie is very good at her job and I saw more of Jacob Elordi’s tongue than I thought I would (at one point, he licks the wall for no reason) and some of the visuals and costumes were rather beautiful. Having watched many literary adaptations in my lifetime on the big screen, I have given up expecting them to be accurate a long time ago, so that was not my issue with the movie. It was more that it refused to have something to say other than capital H horniness and it was boring at the same time. You gotta choose one: Either be vapid and fun or boring and idea-driven but girl, you picked the bad end of the stick twice.
I hope this finds you well and in the middle of plastering the weekend with ideas and plans (like going to the cinema to watch Wuthering Heights for example? LOL). Pro tip: If you drink a glass of kefir in the morning, your stomach will handle the acidity of red wine a lot better. So long for now.
Yours truly, Jacob’s tongue
Always delightful to read one top athlete's appreciation for and understanding of athletes from an entirely different sport. We need more this in the musings of all athletes. As both a lifelong skier and tennis player, I'm often struck by both the complete similarities in the mind set and the use of my body, as well as the total and utter dissimarities in the two sports, which makes both sports more enjoyable and humbling. Both sports are foundationally about fear as the deepest motivator: in tennis, you fear failing at form, ability, and victory essentially alone on an open space for all to see, where in skiing you fear pain and paralysis from physical injury or death. Both fears force you to have laser focus, mental "be here now", and iron will. Thanks for the fab stuff, Andrea.
Physician here (as well as avid skier/tennis player).
Did Lindsey have the right to compete with a torn ACL? Well, yes, she earned that right.
But, tho competing was a romantic gesture, the results speak for themselves. Competing in a race (as opposed to a practice run) where the margins are are in hundredths of seconds, and where the competitors are going 80 mph and pulling several G’s in turns, you are definitely putting yourself at risk by “going for it”on a leg that simply can’t respond normally.
And I’d definitely take issue with the statement that her torn ACL had nothing to do with her crash, which is a very disingenuous comment ! The gate that she hit had been there all week, on all the training runs - it wasn’t some surprise. The question is - Why did she hit it? She hit it because when she came over the roll on that traverse, which is always a tricky part of that course, she was not in control and was thrown higher on the line than she intended - and it’s likely that she would have been able to maintain control if she had had two normally functioning legs on that part of the course.
Anyway - I applaud her courage - but even with modern medicine, she has incurred an injury that may give her some long-term disability.
However, for Lindsey, the pain of not competing might be greater than any future pain she might have in her leg. So ultimately, it’s her call and you have to respect it