Watching a whole week of Olympic action has been really high and sometimes low, sometimes a little heartbreaking. I had the past 2.5 days or so that... I got really low. Really spiritually low. And I did and thought some things out of character. The day after, American Ilia Malinin, the Quad God of figure skating had a really bad performance, the gold-medal favorite repeatedly failing out of his legend quad jumps and extreme difficulty. He finished... like 13th or so, after winning gold in the combined team figure skating event.

What is an Olympian? What makes one?

In that failure, in the failures and missed expectations, cased snowboard jumps, curls too far and short, the mental breakdowns of athletes big and small, I saw my own life, and how it's unfolded.

I'm no Olympian, but I have competed internationally and I know the pressure. I know the blindness, the uncertainty, and I was blind to how I just let my life unravel in the past 23 years. Some of my most meaningful memories of watching the Games aren't of the wins and new track or world records. They are of the failures.

Please, please look at Derek Redmond of Great Britain, in Barcelona 1992, competing in the semifinal for the men's 400m. https://youtu.be/ZYwWB-Z9alg

Derek was going to contention for medals, and after the start of the race, he tore his right hamstring. This peak athlete, ready to win and throw down, was torn down by injury. He hobbled and limped, and I know what tearing muscle is like, it's burning and very unnerving. He started crying. His Olympic dream, medals, everything that could be, the YEARS of effort and sacrifice and toil just to qualify for the Olympiad was torn away in one instant. He wailed.
Derek's father Jim raced out to hold and support his adult 27-year old son. In front of 65,000 attendees in the stands, and the whole world.

If your parent did that to you today, wouldn't it kinda be cringe? But it wasn't, not at all. A father saw his son, his dear child cry, and he forgot about the security, the rules, disqualifying his son by helping him along. And his son cried screaming as his father put an arm around, and they did finish the 400 meters together.

I'm in tears writing this, IRL. *breathes* Derek was a world-class athlete, full of muscle and conditioning. Still he completely fell, lost, disqualified. Yet, the people who loved him, pulled him up and cheered him along. The whole world didn't care about his performance or medal standing, or letting GBR down. What mattered is he was helped, the whole world together finished with him.

And his father came to rescue the broken spirit of his son.

*sighs, wipes face* In that extreme failure, I see my life. And I see the solution to the slob life that I have hidden, that has unraveled out, that I publicize sometimes. My life is that race that could have been, and it didn't happen. I have cried for two decades now. Yet my mother, ill and older as she is, puts her arm around me and lifts me. God hears his wailing son and comes rushing with soft words and helps me to finish. And I cry, lamenting my life, but I know, I know I want to finish. And I know if I were to start looking around me, I'd hear a whole world cheering me on. Not because I am a great furry artist or volunteer, I don't even have a job that sustains me now--it's because I must choose, in the face of my torn rubbish life, to finish.

As I saw yesterday with Ilia Malinin's terrible loss, an Olympian is someone who both rides the highest of gold glories, and visits the darkest parts of themselves, the worst failures, deepest tears. And they are always people who have been carried and helped. They are not alone, they are always with help when they cry, and maybe the gold in them is the courage in their hearts to finish, to keep on.

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Forward to the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, and Eric Moussambani, an Olympian from Equatorial Guinea #GNQ. https://www.olympics.com/en/news/er.....hanged-my-life

What does an Olympian do? How does he affect others?

Eric was the first athlete from his country to compete in the 100-meter freestyle swim. His race wasn't televised live, and he really had nothing to offer as serious competition to most anyone, let alone other Olympian swimmers. Eric taught himself how to swim in a hotel pool that was only about 13 meters long, far short of the 50-meter Olympic length. He had no coach, no team medic nor staff, nothing of the usual support of even the smallest Olympic contingents. He didn't even have much for equipment, in fact a coach from South Africa lent him a swimsuit and goggles to race with. He stepped up to race with two other athletes. At the start, the others disqualified by going too early, and Eric was left to restart alone. And alone he dived, and with no technique, he swam. He labored all alone, with untrained slow form in the giant intimidating Olympic pool, and by the 50-meter halfway mark, he was struggling. But in Australia, a global powerhouse of swim fanatics, the entire stadium erupted into cheering. Everyone there willed and chanted Go! for Eric to finish.

It should have been a total embarrassment for a completely untrained person, the greenest of noobs, to come before the world and flounder in water normally dominated by sharks. Eric did finish, with a time of 1:52. At the time I probably could have gone twice as fast (I was right about 0:58 or maybe 0:56). I knew prepubescent children that could beat him. Yet. Yet Eric finished, and the whole world wanted to meet this man who dared, and did. Not because of his ability at all. Because of his heart, that brought out the best of humanity. It was a performance that is far more memorable to me than the USA-Australia swim rivalry ever was.

*sighs again* Eric failed, he never stood a chance at all. Not even with years of training and support beforehand might he have been competitive. But he swam with courage, with thoughts of his family and his will to participate in his gaze! And he finished. Eric never raced at the Olympics again, but it turns out he bettered his time and would now give me a swim for my money, setting his country's new national record (0:57, not slow at all), and now he trains his country's future athletes. From his failure, his inability, came the building of two Olympic pools in his country, and a national swim program that lifts future athletes, making them safer in the water.

No gold medal, no medal at all. But to me, even his failure is sustaining. He is an Olympian forever, I am not. An Olympian lifts all those around him, raises opportunities, calls others to dare and try.

Each time I remember Eric it stings. Where is my courage? Where is my Olympic ideal, higher faster, stronger - together? Why don't I look up to my values when I flounder ineffectively in my life? But those questions do not matter like the actions do. Finish. Keep on. Post a time. Be carried by those who cheer you.

I will never be competitive as a furry artist. I will never be a big artist period. I may never make a living by art, and with my non-career life, earning enough to sustain myself one day will likely be a sparse difficult existence. I certainly never will be as fast as I was in the pool. Many other people have more resources and mental strength I will not have. Mental illness is likely here to stay. Even so, I must participate. I must flounder in the water, the chance I have to try. I will never win, nor even matter. But there are so many who want to cheer me on. My family, God, all my friends, even the people I didn't know about, who say how I've touched their lives (I keep being surprised by this). *cries silently*

Isn't it surprising how the greatest heroes might not be the victors, or even significant? :') Yet they win the world with heart. Sometimes I pull up these memories when I am alone and low, and sometimes that is what I need to keep on. I want to be, but likely will not ever be anything big. Doesn't matter. This Olympic cycle is comforting because even if I fail and cry, I am not alone. I should still participate, and finish. And I can still maybe be a champion in meaningful ways that lift. I might feel very much an Olympian, a heart champion, then.

The Olympic creed is this:
"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."
--Pierre de Coubertin, modern Olympic founder,1924

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Every Olympiad, these are the mind-resetting things that I sift inside my head and soul. Now you know one of the pre-furry, pre-millenium-joys about me. I grew up with these dreams, and they are a pillar that IS me and guides me. When I do #5000MileCouch posts it isn't just Kurra's sportsball superficiality, this is my lifeblood. And the beauty is, the values of sport are meaningful and available for free to everyone. The values appear if you race your friend down the sidewalk to the end of your block. Or you play ping pong in a basement weekend party.

Each Olympic cycle, it hurts a little more to be older and less fit, but it is sweet honey to be reminded that I should still participate, to remember my Olympic values, to lift others if I can, to strive. This has been a constant in my life, since watching Seoul 1988, barely catching a bit of the Closing Ceremonies with my mother and her mother, on the dusty small static-filled screen of our small TV, a lifetime ago. I saw how much my mom loved her sport, and lived how she gave me the chance to enjoy the same. And I did. And inside, there is this little rebellious spark, deaf to the insistence of age and shoulder instability, that says "Look at those 40-something and 50-something Olympians on the screen. Don't you want to dare Kurra? Don't you want to see how close you might get? Couldn't it be an amazing test of yourself?" And silently to myself, I nod... sometimes it provokes me to pull on my old swimsuits, or plug in my drawing tablet, or just run barefoot in my forest trails, and I start pushing myself, seeing if.
Higher, faster, stronger - together...

OOO
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