You aren’t. He looked like he wanted to run very, very far away and maybe compete in track in the summer games during the practice stream. I wanted to give him a hug during that and I’m not someone who’s enthusiastic about his medal prospects (I don’t hate him, I just think he’s the victim of how America treats athletes and our lack of a bench in figure skating). He seems to head into the first jumping pass expecting to fall and by the end he looked afraid to jump, period. If Hanyu does well, and it seems that he well, I hope Chen uses that as motivation and a way to focus. Maybe the actual competition will help.
But, seriously, someone needs to give him a hug already. What’s doubly awful is he seems pretty level-headed, but the nation/media lost its mind over him. My boyfriend is competitive internationally and a pretty big name in what he does, but he’s the most grounded person even after a loss, because he has the ability to not let all the pressure and expectation eat him alive, even when he’s being told he’s repping America. But the Olympics are a level of “huge” that can’t be defined and I don’t know how anybody holds up. Yagudin was public about seeing a sports psychologist; if you’re going to demand an 18 year old win a gold medal on first try, we as a nation should probably pitch in for all the therapy that’s going to be required for that feat.
