Olympic Fame Used To Be Optional. Now It's an Obligation (1980)
Eric Heiden won five gold medals and chose anonymity. Today's Olympians are performing under a weight that didn't exist then.
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I.
It is an inevitable fact of life that as you get older, you’ll find yourself utterly confused by the youth of America. Case in point: The other night, two of my friends were texting back and forth about the proper definition of the word mogging (I’m still not entirely sure what the hell it means, but honestly, it’s not for me to understand). This is why the whole 6-7 thing caught fire: Its fundamental inscrutability was mostly just a way for young people to frustrate their elders. It was a way for them to get us to out-think ourselves, which feels like payback, given that we’ve created a world for them where performative behavior is the norm and overthinking is the default state.
I’ve found myself thinking about what it’s like to be a young person these days because I’ve spent the past week-and-a-half consuming the Winter Olympics. Every night, I find myself watching young and beautiful athletes perform at the peak of their physical powers while surrounded by unlimited supplies of free condoms. Given all of that, it seems like they should feel happy and free and unburdened. But I’ve sensed a vibe shift during these Olympics where everything feels heavier. The pressure to compete and to win has always been there—and there have always been those who have withered under that pressure—but this year, it seems more palpable. Athletes who seemed like sure things to win medals have crashed and fallen and overthought the moment they spent four years preparing for. And when asked why it happened, they struggle to explain why.
“I just felt like I had no control,” said 21-year-old Ilia Malinin, the heavily favored figure skater nicknamed “The quad god,” who collapsed during his free skate and finished eighth.
But part of me wonders if the explanation is obvious. Part of me wonders if the reason that even the best of this generation struggle to clear their heads is because they’ve spent nearly their entire lives performing for other people. Part of me wonders if it’s because they’ve felt like they never really had any control in the first place.
II.
In the weeks before he completed one of the most prolific performances in Olympic history, Eric Heiden understood the choice he would soon face. There were, Heiden’s agent told a Sports Illustrated reporter, athletes like Mark Spitz and Bruce Jenner, those who became “perpetual Olympic personalities,” and who spent their lives trafficking off the fame they’d earned in a matter of weeks. And then there were those like Heiden, who was already uncomfortable with the fact that people in his hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, had begun to recognize him at all.
“I wouldn’t want to get involved in all that self-promotion, you know, constantly selling myself to the media and the public all the time like Spitz and Jenner have,” Heiden said. “You burn yourself out in no time doing that.”
