Okay, I love the Olympics.
So, I don’t know if you’ve read about her, but Elizabeth (Liz on instagram, where I totally follow her now) Swaney is an olympic freestyle skier who came in last in the halfpipe. She represented Hungary (but was born and raised in the US).
To me, she’s fascinating. She wanted to be in the Olympics, so she kept looking for routes to get there until she got there.
She tried to compete for Venezuela for a bit. She tried skeleton…. She just kept going until she found a way! And I think that’s pretty dope.
She’s kinda fascinating, and I sort of think trying stuff in life is her jam. One of the articles I was reading said she tried out to be a “Raiderette” (Oakland Raiders cheerleader.) She got her master’s degree from Harvard. She even ran against Arnold Schwarzenegger for Governor…
Some (apparently many?) people think she’s ridiculous. (She’s getting seemingly a lot of social media hate right now… And even a number of the articles I’m seeing have something along the lines of “schemed her way into the Olympics” in the title.)
It’s weird because when I was reading articles about Pita Taufatofua the other night (who took up cross-country skiing within the last few years, specifically just to be in the Winter Olympics, and then did very poorly (and stated one of his only goals was to finish before they turned the lights off)), a lot of them were just this kind of jovial “haha, isn’t this crazy? What a fun dude.”
And now, for Liz, it’s like, “You’re a disgrace to the Olympics and the sport! How dare you wiggle your way in?!”
Does it have something to do with her being a woman? Maybe. Or maybe her ride that basically had no tricks is easier to notice than just a slower cross-country skier who doesn’t have the spotlight directly on him. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I think(?) he’s really from Tonga, and she’s an American representing Hungary. I don’t know what the deal is, but I do know that I personally think it’s super lame.
I love both of their stories. I love stories about anyone who made something happen. She’s not hurting anyone by being in the Olympics! Life is really short. If you can go live in the Olympic Village and represent a country your grandparents are from, I say have at it!
(And to all these people commenting such mean things on her instagram (about something that truly doesn’t affect them one bit)? Well… She’s an Olympic athlete. Be mad all you want, but she’s truly living her life!)
So, anyway, she’s my kindred spirit because I’m totally gonna go to Harvard and be a Pacemate and an Olympian and then I can swap stories with Liz and we can laugh in exotic locales while angry people on their couches complain about it.
#TeamLizSwaney