Lara Gut-Behrami couldn’t contain her tears during her Olympic title at the 2022 Olympic Games.Image: KEYSTONE
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Austrian skiers must pay a fine if they dare to shed a tear in front of the cameras. This is in every way a misunderstanding of sport and its dramaturgy.
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Lara Gut-Behrami’s tears in front of the cameras have something real, something authentic. In Sölden, two weeks ago, she cracked the armor and dropped the mask of the icy athlete in front of the press – whom she prefers to keep at a respectable distance.
Her tears have a flavor: before being a champion, she is a woman. Surgical on the slats during the previous season, she appears fragile when it is necessary to launch the new exercise, distressed by a poor state of health.
If “LGB” skied under the Austrian colors, she would be fined 50 euros. This law, enacted internally and by mutual agreement by the members of the speed team, is simple: no crying in front of the cameras unless someone is dead.
Funny times.
The Austrians missed a chapter, because sport is a Greek tragedy, an art that cinema has tried to narrate through unique destinies. Sport, this odyssey of surpassing itself which refers to an inherent pressure, as well as the frustration which harnesses itself to it. Many athletes, by dint of keeping everything, controlling everything, flirt or sink into depression. The individual quest for competition is enough to blow a bolt.
Living your entire life in control and staying focused on the goal requires a mind of steel. And sometimes there is a breakup, emotions take over and the defense mechanism applies:
we let joy and disappointment burst forth, and we cry.
From Roger Federer, who lets crocodile tears flow during a Grand Slam coronation, through sailing specialist Maud Jayet, who sobs after her 4th place at the Paris Olympics, tears are the conclusion (triumphant or sad ) of a primarily emotional ordeal.
Swimmer Alain Bernard, during his 2008 Olympic title, released this sentence:
“These are years of work that come to fruition in a few seconds. The sacrifices and the hard work sessions return and with them the moments of joy and doubt. I couldn’t help but let go of a few tears.”
The soul of the champion must internalize, because competition is a Dantesque funnel, an excess of tension and concentration. At a certain stage, you have to externalize. Michael Jordan, for example, even several years after his retirement, could not hold back his tears when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2009.
Hermann Maier, the great “Herminator”, also shed tears over a monstrous career.Image: AP
Austrian skiing leaders should also delve into the archive videos and remember the farewell of their legend, Hermann Maier, who could not hide his emotion. The end of a glorious and painful trajectory (his terrible motorcycle accident which almost cost him a leg). He came back, he shone and he cried. There is no reason to beat yourself up, letting yourself be overwhelmed is normal.
The sacrifices will remain forever imprinted on the bodies, and tears are a response. So, to ban them is to not understand the sport.
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