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Generational Talent

Jordan Stoltz, about ten years old, skating on his backyard pond in Wisconsin. Photo by his dad, Dirk Stoltz.

…widely expected to be the Greatest Of All Time…

A couple days ago, gold-medal winning figure skater Ilia Malinin popped out of his planned quad axel into a single and crashed on a quad lutz, thus causing the entire corpus of American media into a frenzy. Just days earlier, Malinin had single-handedly lifted Team USA into the gold in Team Figures, gutting out an unforgettable performance with five quads. But with a few off-balanced landings in his Individual competition, he transformed from the “just might be a” G.O.A.T. into the other kind of goat, the Charlie Brown kind.

When I first saw Malinin skate in December at the Grand Prix Skate Final, where he broke the world record for points in Men’s Figures, the commentators were showering syrupy accolades down, repeating that buzzword of the 21st century: Generational Talent. It’s a phrase that used to be “once-in-a-lifetime” or “living legend…” But Generational Talent has to be forged into actual medals, so, for now, Malinin can read the memoirs of Lindsay Vonn, Michelle Kwan, Kurt Browning, Bode Miller, and other great athletes who did not meet the absurd expectations placed on their Olympic shoulders. He is still a gold medal winner and may, still, end up being a G.O.A.T. Yet surely telling someone for years that they just might be the Greatest Of All Time is a burden rather than a compliment.

Meanwhile, since those words Generational Talent are the phrase du jour, I thought this is worth exploring in full, even if Malinin is not the centerpiece.

What kind of Generational Talent are we seeing in the 2026 Games? What does that even mean? There is plenty out there. In fact, there’s another blond young man who just might live up to the phrase, not to mention a handful of women who ski like crazy, some old chicks who have lasted for a generation, and the real GOAT of the Games, the “Speed King,” who is on track to win every race in which he’s entered. Generational Talent can mean a lot of things.

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The Nerve

Lindsay Vonn during the Women’s Downhill training runs, which went perfectly fine, despite her injured knee. Photo from USA Today.

It’s only Day 5, and I’m already exhausted from the tension. And from the questions: Why did they do that? How could they do that? What were they thinking? What was going through their mind?

I have come to realize that while the Summer Olympics Games is athleticism, par excellence–speed, grace, power, technique, and courage–the Winter Games are all that plus insanity and psychosis. How could they possibly compete under those conditions, especially with the eyes of the entire world watching? And yet they do, again and again.

There will be much to talk about in the coming days, but today’s post has to start with the big topic, and I’ll get it right out there. Lindsay Vonn is a badass, and I applaud her for her efforts. I know some of you disagree, so I want to get into this a little, into the context of what Alpine skiers do, and the Olympic history that surrounds an athlete’s choices. Part of that larger context is the stress of what all these athletes must endure in making spectacles of themselves.

They have a lot of nerve.

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The Unholy Alliance of Sport & Audience, Olympic Version

Ironic caption that, given that the photo isn’t of people watching, but cameras watching. Are they interfering or are they essential to the audience? Where does the athlete fit in this alliance?

The only thing worse than the networks’ coverage of the Olympic Games would be if the TV networks didn’t cover the Games. We could play a drinking game: name all the things you hate about NBC (or the BBC or ….)’s coverage of the Olympics. You’d be plastered before the athletes started marching into the stadium.

The packaged, preselected narrative ruins the live experience as TV aims for the most photogenic, the most “American-looking,” the most-likely winners, and ignores most everyone else. The nightly entertainment package is full of insipid chatter by the hosts, incessant shots of family members, content-less interviews with athletes who aren’t competing, and not enough competition to show the competition. And don’t get me started on the idiotic obsession with the medal count. So much to dislike about the way the entertainment media “crafts” narratives about the sports, so much that interferes with the sports, themselves.

In fact, I was planning on a good ol’ fashioned rant about the lousy media as the Opening Ceremonies approached, but I started thinking about the history of the Games. The media changes the Games because the media curates the Games, with its intrusive format controlling the content as that guy McLuhan would say. But is it THAT different today than before?

As much as we prefer our athletes to be unsullied by the watchers, we might think about how their performance has always been about both the audience and purveyors. We want to watch; they want to compete. The media is in the middle. The media has changed the game, but it always has been doing that, from the time of the ancient Greeks to the 1896 reboot to the introduction of television to the drones and ubiquitous cameras. AI will introduce some other ruination and perversion, but…same as it ever was. There’s always been an unholy alliance between the athlete, the audience, and the curator.

The Temple of Hera is still visible at Olympia, as is the entrance to the stadia, the gymnasium, and the alcove where the Olympic torch is lit. Kajmeister photo.
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