Better than you think

There’s been a lot of griping about the performance of the U.S. ski team, which has won only one medal. They brought a lot of criticism on themselves by boasting that they were the best in the world, and they clearly are not — not here anyway.

But some of the criticism seems shortsighted. America’s ski team is one of the best in the world. But we are so obsessed with winning so that’s not good enough.

Many American skiers have finished in the top 10, missing out on medals by a few tenths of a second. If you or I skied their events, we would lose by minutes — if we made it down the course at all.

It reminds me of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. I attended a preliminary heat of the 5,000 meters, which was 12 ½ laps around the track. The winner came in around 13 minutes. Everyone else finished by 14 minutes — except for one runner from Liberia. As his time neared 15:30, he the crowd started cheering louder and louder for him until he hit the finish line — and kept going. He still had one lap to go.

The crowd stood, roaring with laughter and cheers until the Liberian finally finished in 17 minutes.

Then it hit me. This guy was the slowest guy in his heat, by far. But he was much faster than the fans that were laughing at him.

There are 6 billion people on the planet. The last place finisher in an Olympic event is probably better than 5.9 billion of them.

And the U.S. skiers are much better than last place.