Already a world champion in alpine skiing, two-time Olympic gold medalist Mikaela Shiffrin entered the Beijing Games as a favorite in multiple races.
But by Tuesday, the media focus was only on what she did not do.
On Monday, Shiffrin crashed 11 seconds into the opening run of the giant slalom race, of which she was the defending gold medalist. And on Wednesday, she missed a gate within the first five seconds of the slalom, shockingly “skiing out” for the second time at the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Afterward, Shiffrin appeared to be at a loss for what went wrong, saying, “It feels like a really big letdown.”
“My entire career has taught me to trust in my skiing if it’s good skiing, and that’s all that I have to rely on,” she said. “Of course the pressure is high, but that didn’t feel like the biggest issue today ... So it’s not the end of the world, and it’s so stupid to care this much, but I feel that I have to question a lot now.”
While Shiffrin was still processing her emotions about what happened, NBC’s coverage focused on how big of a failure her disqualification was. For minutes, and even as commercials rolled in a split screen, cameras focused on Shiffrin sitting with her head on her knees in the snow.
As video footage continued to show Shiffrin on the ground, rather than the skiers competing after her, one NBC commentator said, “That will play in slow motion for ages to come in her mind. That is so brutal.”
Another commentator suggested: “When you think of past disappointments in past Olympics in any sport, this is just hard to believe. Going to be way up there on a list of Olympic disappointments that you can ever imagine.”
The intense focus on Shiffrin’s loss drew criticism on social media and comparisons to the scrutiny gymnast Simone Biles faced after withdrawing from competition during the Summer Olympics last year.
Like Biles, Shiffrin has been open about her mental health struggles; during the Olympics, she’s talked about how hard it is to compete without the support of her father, who died suddenly after an accident at home in 2020.
“Right now, I would really like to call him, so that doesn’t make it easier,” Shiffrin said Monday.
Biles herself sent heart emojis to Shiffrin after her run on Wednesday and retweeted commentary that critiqued people who framed Shiffrin’s loss as a shame.
Very few of us become Olympic athletes competing under unimaginable pressure. But many of us face personally devastating career disappointments after investing years of our life into work.
How do you talk to yourself about what happened? And how should people respectfully talk about it with you?
What Shriffrin’s story demonstrates, along with those of so many other Olympians who fail to medal as expected, is that our vocabulary around high-stakes career failure is way too limited ― and far too harmful.
Don’t assume you know how someone experiencing a major disappointment should feel.
Just like the NBC commentators, people too often jump to conclusions about how an athlete should react and feel after losing on such a public stage, which can do more harm than good.
“This happened yesterday. Let this person breathe,” Nevada-based psychologist Tanisha Ranger said Wednesday. “It sucks for athletes because they are in the public eye, and all these people who could never do a fraction of what they could do have all these big opinions about what they should do. That’s extremely stressful.”
Ranger said two extreme kinds of reactions to failure are “This is the worst thing” and “It’s not even that big a deal,” but there is a more nuanced middle ground.
“Most people that are highly successful have experienced a tremendous amount of a failure in life.”
- Josh Norman, sports psychiatrist
People who believe it’s not a big deal may try to tell you to “move on” and “get over it” before you are ready, perpetuating “toxic positivity” — empty platitudes that minimize and dismiss legitimate concerns and real negative emotions. Forcing positivity is, unfortunately, a common response people share when setbacks happen to others at work.
But it’s OK to feel bad after losing out on something you really wanted. Feeling like crap is an appropriate first reaction to failure, whether or not you are an Olympian, Ranger said.
People on the outside don’t get to determine how long that emotion lasts, she said.
Ranger added: “It is important to acknowledge that you worked really hard and it did not turn out how you want and that is painful. You are allowed to experience and express that pain in whatever way that you need to as long as it’s not harming yourself or anyone else. And then you can move forward.”
If you’re the one experiencing a career failure, it’s important not to let it define you.
If you just experienced a big career disappointment like failing an entrance exam or not getting a major promotion, the goal, Ranger said, is to not conflate that one failure as proof that you are a failure.
“If you failed a test and you make that about yourself being inadequate in some way, you make it more likely that you’ll fail it the next time,” she said. “As opposed to failing the test, being sad, being angry, being hurt, feeling all of the grief things that you feel and then being able to say, ‘OK, now let me process it for real. What was the failure here? ... What can I do differently next time?’”
Learning to differentiate between experiencing disappointment and feeling like a disappointment is a lesson we could all learn.
Take it from Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, Shiffrin’s boyfriend, who posted a supportive message on Instagram that critiqued people who focused so much on Shiffrin’s loss. Instead, he put it in perspective.
“Most of you probably look at [this picture] saying: ‘she has lost it,’ ‘she can’t handle the pressure’ or ‘what happened,’” he wrote. “Which makes me frustrated, because all I see is a top athlete doing what a top athlete does! It’s a part of the game and it happens.”
It’s an example of how the emotions surrounding a loss aren’t limited to those that are heartbreaking.
“Most things in life are not so binary. It’s not a full success or a full failure. Most things are multifaceted,” said Josh Norman, a sports psychiatrist at the Ohio State University.
He said that when people work toward one career goal all their life, failure can hit hard, especially if they are perfectionists. But he also noted: “Most people that are highly successful have experienced a tremendous amount of a failure in life.”
Figure skater Vincent Zhou is another example of how there are many reactions to a high-stakes loss, and they don’t all have to be negative. Earlier this week, he shared in an Instagram video that he had COVID-19 and had to withdraw from the Olympics. He was emotional and clearly sad about ending his individual campaign in Beijing, but he also put what happened in perspective with his many career accomplishments.
“While it was always my dream to medal on an Olympic stage — which I did accomplish before this happened — the over-arching dream was just to skate,” Zhou said in his video. “If I didn’t love this, I wouldn’t still be doing it. I know I love this. That passion goes a long way.”