There is a legend that while sitting at a Paris cafe an admirer sees Picasso sketching on a napkin. As Picasso gets up to leave the admirer asks Picasso if she can have the drawing. Picasso agrees, and requests a million Francs. The admirer complains and says “It only took you five minutes to draw.” Picasso replies, “No, it took me a lifetime to draw.”
Every four years I am catapulted back in time as I watch the Olympic Games. I am reminded that thousands of hours went into each jump, stroke, pass, throw, step. As spectators, we see seconds or possibly minutes of a performance that took a lifetime to achieve. One foot fault, one bad stroke, one penalty, or one bad decision in thousands of hours can sometimes define entire careers…if we let them.
Just like that Brody Malone, missed the high bar while performing a full-twisting layout Tkachev. Just like that Jade Carey fell out of bounds while doing a front tuck into a roundoff back handspring. Just like that Torri Huske won the gold while Gretchen Walsh won the silver in the Women’s 100m Butterfly. In a matter of seconds, we saw that even with thousands of hours of hard work, practice, dedication, and talent that only about 0.000001560845334% (one one millionth of one percent) of human beings possess, the desired outcome of a performance is not guaranteed!
I’ve had my own “Just like that” moment, in 2000 I lost the US Olympic Trials in the Men’s Single Sculls, by .33 of second…and just like that I wasn’t going to the Sydney Olympics, and that could have been it. However, in watching Brody Malone win a bronze medal in the Men’s Team All-Around, after his mishap, and in watching Jade Carey win gold in the Women’s Team Artistic All-Around, after her fall I was reminded of some other things that happened “Just like that.” In 2000, after losing the Olympic trials, just like that I won the Diamond Challenge Sculls at Henley Royal Regatta, and four years of solid intense training later, just like that in 2004 I finished 6th at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
So what do mishaps in pursuit of Olympic Glory have to do with the price of a picture by Picasso in Paris? Well as athletes we have to remember that even our worst performances are masterpieces, the outcome of a single event in time is not guaranteed. Things can change “Just like that” and what we know and believe about ourselves is what is most important, we must always value ourselves. In the end, our failures are just mere moments among a multitude of minutes, they are part of the story, but they are not the entire picture.
