Today, in St. Moritz, Lindsey Vonn is back. An extraordinary 14th place
Dear Director, we live in an anesthetized world and here perhaps more so… A world that wants us to be spectators: silent, distracted, dozing in front of screens that show us prefabricated stories, other people's lives to be observed without ever participating or linked to radiant pasts that we look at with regret.
But every now and then, amidst the grayness of ordinary days, something happens. Something that pierces the veil of habit and reminds us or should remind us that real life is not made to just be looked at: it is made to be lived, with all its imperfections, falls and resurrections.
Today, in St. Moritz, something happened that deserves to be told. Lindsey Vonn is back.
It's not a comeback to win. There is no medal, no first place, no trophy. Instead, there is something greater: a gesture that speaks to anyone who has ever felt the call of their spirit, the desire to fight even when the body seems to shout “enough”.
After six years of absence, at 40 years old and with a titanium knee, Lindsey Vonn showed up at the starting gate of the Super-G and crossed the finish line in 14th place out of 57 competitors.
A modest result, some would say, almost as modest as whoever said it. A number far from the podium also occupied by an Italian. But I, Director, saw something extraordinary in that 14th place. I saw the purity of the human spirit, that invisible force that drives some people to live to the fullest.
Often, too often, we dismiss companies like this with one word: “talent”. It is a convenient, lazy word, which simplifies what is actually complex, profound, elusive.
Director, talent is never a gift of pure genetics. It's an engine. A fire that is fueled by passion, perseverance, sacrifice and a healthy powerful dose of dissatisfaction.
Yes, because dissatisfaction – that feeling that many escape without success – is the fuel of those who are not satisfied, of those who do not want to live halfway. Talent is determination, discipline, curiosity. It's choosing, deciding, believing and moving forward when it would be easier to stop. Talent is also for me an indirect act of rebellion: against mediocrity, against greyness, against the idea that it is better not to take risks, not to take responsibility, to live waiting to die.
And here, Director, allow me a digression. A few days ago, Siena had the honor of hosting an extraordinary figure. An athlete, one of those “alien subjects” who embody the pure essence of talent as described. I had the privilege of walking a long stretch of the road alongside him, years ago, and I can tell you that he is one of those who carries within him the engine I was talking about before: a unique combination of passion, determination and vision, of antifragility.
Yet, allow me a note. When this pure spirit reveals itself to you, it must be celebrated in its authenticity, and not adapted, framed, bent to the needs of a superordinate protocol. This, Director, is the risk we run: transforming the living and pulsating talent into a faded, comfortable image that does not disturb and we begin with the school to cage the potential instead of enhancing it. The authentic spirit, the one that inspires and lifts us, cannot be broken.
That spirit, Director, does not belong only to great athletes. I have also seen it in very different situations, light years away from the ski slopes.
Allow me to tell you about WW, a cancer patient of mine from many years ago. He was a slim Swiss man, with a troubled life story: he had worked halfway around the world, doing the most disparate jobs. When I met him, he was a bricklayer, and he knew he had little time left.
Yet, this man did not feel sorry for himself. He had the courage and clarity to transform tragedy into a lesson. One day, seeing me having difficulty dealing with his condition, he said to me: “Don't worry about me. I know I will die soon, but this illness has been an opportunity. It allowed me to understand who I really am.”
Director, that phrase remained engraved in my memory as if on stone. I saw it today, reflected in Lindsey Vonn's smile as she crossed the finish line. It's the same philosophy, the same spirit: the awareness that every day, every challenge, every obstacle can be an opportunity to discover your own value, what the fearful will never be able to discover.
Here, Director, is the central point of my reflection: we need stories.
Beautiful stories, true stories. Stories that lift us out of the greyness, that shake us, that help us understand what it really means to live. Stories that speak to too many passive spectators, to those who are content to watch from the sofa, and that invite them to get out on the track and participate.
Dear viewers, even less is there any need to be aware of a past that no longer exists, that existed, which should instead inspire us to try again. It's a shame for those who in the past were still spectators but with full bellies. For them there will be no future if not passive like their entire lives. They will continue to complain and wait for someone to do something for them.
But Lindsey Vonn tells us she started thinking about a return the day after knee surgery. He used his past to define his future. It also happened to me when I was very young when in '83 I burst my lung under strain during a regatta and had to be operated on because I wanted to get back quickly. Having undergone surgery in May, I went to Africa a month later with my right arm half-raised and with my mother scared but also curious about this madness. She too was an anti-system, someone who had clear rights and pursued them in everyday life instead of talking about them.
Wouldn't it have been crazier to accept the limits that someone proposed to me when I had the problem? I don't care if it was the right solution but it was right because it was my solution.
Who knows, maybe we don't accept “dying” but it's better than being alive.
Lindsey Vonn's story today is one of them. It's not just a race, it's not just a return. It's a powerful message: it doesn't matter where you've arrived, it matters where you still have the courage to go driven by passion and dissatisfaction. Being dissatisfied is a sentence if you do not act in your individuality. These stories remind us that life is not meant to be lived in black and white, but in color. Of course, truly living means taking risks, it means accepting pain, fatigue, failure. But it also means discovering the bittersweet taste of personal victory, the one that doesn't need medals to be celebrated.
Director, my hope is that these stories can reach at least someone. Someone, many, too many, who today live in the shadows, passive spectators of a life that they don't dare touch. I want to believe that telling stories like that of Lindsey Vonn, or that extraordinary athlete we hosted in Siena, or that of WW can light a spark.
May they be an antidote to greyness, a call to live by determining oneself. There is a need for it and here more, here where the greyness hides in defining us through the memories of a past story which, if you look carefully, was the antechamber of the end that then came
Because real life doesn't wait. Real life is not comfortable, nor easy, nor linear. But it's the only one that's really worth living.
Today, Lindsey Vonn gave us a life lesson, a lesson in courage, a lesson in what it means to be human. It's up to us to decide whether we want to just watch it or whether we have the courage to follow it.
A passionate greeting, a rebel fighting against the greyness.
Paolo Benini
Related News :