Looking to enjoy the storytelling in my sports

Every two years, alternating between the winter and summer games, I get to enjoy a couple of weeks of great Olympic stories. The stories around the competition are only part of it. As a storyteller at heart and a lover of feature stories, I love it when we get the stories behind the athletes.

This year, as I tried to settle in to enjoy the storytelling, the sharply divided world in which we live invaded the sports space once again.

Confessing my apparent lack of pop culture knowledge, I have to say that, before the last week or so, if you asked me to tell you something about Bad Bunny, I would have been at a loss for words. I had heard of a musician by that name but couldn’t tell you about his music.

After the uproar surrounding his being selected to perform at Super Bowl halftime, I was expecting some sort of wildly offensive performance. Instead, it seems we were just bothered that a performer from Puerto Rico, which is in fact a part of the United States, was going to be on stage.

Bad halftime shows have become a part of the Super Bowl experience so I’m still not sure about the outrage over this one. But it revealed again how divided our nation has become.

Rather than just turn off the TV or just using halftime as a time to grab some snacks, people in politics had to create an alternate show. They just needed to divide us. I’m still not sure I understand why.

Fortunately, we have the Olympics.

With all the attention going towards 41-year-old all-time downhill great Lindsey Vonn, American skier Breezy Johnson won the gold medal in the women’s downhill. It’s a great story.

Vonn, skiing without the ACL in her left knee, clipped a gate near the top of the hill and tumbled down the mountain, requiring an airlift to get her down and to the hospital. Considering she tore the ACL just a week prior, the fact she was competing was a big story and it became the overwhelming topic of the coverage.

Vonn says the prior injury did not impact the fall, but she needed surgery to repair a compound tibia fracture. After the event, Vonn said she has no regrets as downhill skiing, like life, involves risk and courage.

“Yesterday my Olympic dream did not finish the way I dreamt it would,” she said. “I dared to dream, I tried, I dreamt, I jumped.” Vonn said daring to dream is what life is all about.

On the ice, U.S. figure skater Ilia Malinin has been spectacular so far. You can see the joy he gets from competing all over his face every time he’s on the ice. That’s one of the great aspects of the Olympics. Athletes work for a decade to get there, and then it all rides on five minutes. Yet there is the joy of being there.

The storytelling from the figure skating venue includes the uplifting, heartfelt story of U.S. skater Maxim Naumov. His parents, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, former world champions who coached in the U.S. were among the 67 people killed when American Airlines Flight 5342, returning from Wichita, Kansas with a large group coming home after then 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships collided with a Blackhawk helicopter, killing all aboard.

When Maxim took the ice in Italy, as we would expect, his parents were on his mind. His short program performance began with a Jumbotron message, “Mom and Dad, this is for you,” and after finishing his performance, he remembered them.

“I didn’t know if I was going to cry, smile, or laugh—and all I could do was look up at them,” he said. “And man, I still can’t believe what just happened.”

Here’s to all of us putting the politics aside and enjoying the great storytelling from Milan for a couple of weeks.