Imbolc Waxing Wild Moon
Lindsay Vonn under the wild moon in Vancouver. What a performance. I referred a few weeks back to Michael Jordan’s game against Utah in the NBA finals. He had the flu, was obviously sick, but put up a triple double and da Bulls won the game. This was better.
Vonn, skiing with a deeply bruised shin, plummeted down the 1.8 mile long, rock hard ice of the Olympic downhill course, favoring her right leg, favoring it so that she took the weight on her inside leg in turns and even skied the last several yards to the finish line on one ski. Imagine the physics of that. And won the gold.
I don’t know if anything in sport is actually heroic, but this run was a monster testament to the human spirit, the will to win and the ability to block out pain when in pursuit of a goal. Her reaction at the bottom matched her run. She jumped, squeaked, pounded her fists in the air, lay down, cried, ran to her husband to cry some more, smiled and made others smile and cry along with her. And to think she learned to ski at Buck Hill. Go Minnesota.
The flying tomato deserves a nod, too. I don’t know whether snowboard half-pipe is a sport, but it’s certainly athletic and Shaun White, he of the long red hair and the dazzling smile, showed the heart of a champion. He won the competition on his first run with a 45+ score out of 50 without laying down his public secret trick, a 1280 Double McTwist. On his second run, when he could have coasted, instead he took his last run up the pipe to launch, execute and land this trick. I saw it and I don’t get it, but the crowd and the judges did. He got a 48.4 on his final run. In other words, he increased his score after he had already won the gold. An entertainer.