Lindsey Vonn is an American Hero

Lindsey Vonn is an American Hero

I don’t know much about Lindsey Vonn, or down hill skiing. Just what we all know about the events from the last couple of days, which we’ve all seen. From that little bit, though, I know that Lindsey is an American hero, one that we need desperately right now.

We Americans lionize winning and trash losing. For any of us, the Patriots had a failed season because they didn’t win the Superbowl. We deal with failure, but denying it, or laying the blame elsewhere. We even see this attitude in our politicians on both sides of the aisle. We need to learn again that there are good failures.

Lindsey could have failed in her goal of winning more medals in the Olympics by just not trying. She was 41, which is considered old in the world of top competitor sports. She had knee surgery. Just weeks ago, she blew out her ACL. No one would have thought poorly of her if she decided not to compete. Our attitude to failure and success would consider this a wise decision, keeping her out of the spotlight. The thing is, this would 100% guarantee failure of her goal.

Lindsey could have made a run that was more conservative. We know she could, she did it a day earlier to qualify. She would wind up on the leader board somewhere outside the medals. We would all say, “Look at what she overcame just to get here”. This would be our ubiquitous participation trophy. You participated, good for you.

Lindsey did neither of those things. She was going for the gold, which meant skiing the most aggressive, risky line she could with the smallest margin of error. If she skied that and still didn’t get the gold, we may not be able to tell the difference between being more conservative and just not making it, but Lindsey could. That fact that something freaky happened, or that she was off her line more than she wanted was always a possibility. That is the cost of getting the gold. Some may criticize Lindsey for risking too much – that her failure is a lesson in risking too much, or living too close to the edge, but if the true goal is to win a medal, all other paths had 100% failure.

We seem to have forgotten that to have a chance at real success, we need to take reasonable risks. They don’t always pan out, but we guarantee they will never pan out if we don’t try. That is the real lesson we learn from Lindsey’s bravery. Not all heroes accomplish their goals, but they all inspire us. Thank you Lindsey for showing us to take reasonable risks to achieve the best we possibly can.