In the fifth or seventh or twenty-third yoga class I ever took, I fell on my face. Flat. Full length. On the floor. I laughed. The fall hadn’t hurt me, and how often do you fail so spectacularly that you fall on your face? I am bad at many things. Some I love anyhow (drawing), some I get better at (yoga), and others I give up (chainmail). But, I take real joy in learning new things. The zing of mastery is delicious, but the hilarity of failure is its own fun, too. And so, flat on my mat in yoga, when I was supposed to be perched just so, I laughed.

Swaney’s Olympic Dream

Thumbtack recruiter Elizabeth Swaney became an overnight viral sensation after her performance as a member of the Hungarian freeskiing team in 2018. Placing last in the women’s halfpipe, Swaney completed no flips or tricks. While news outlets weighed in about whether her efforts were charming or an international insult, Swaney insisted she is no scammer. I don’t want to laugh at Swaney, and I don’t want to laugh with her, either. She isn’t joking. I do want to give her a high five, though.

In a recent article, Davy Rothbart writes about Swaney’s intense interest in trying and mastering new things. He details her surprisingly long path towards the Olympics. He also mentions that her mother is a dedicated sweepstakes player, which is an important detail.

Swaney didn’t just stumble into halfpipe, but in fact dreamed of going to the games for years, trying to qualify in other sports (some of which she has a real aptitude for) before finding the sport she was most likely to be able to get to the games for. Rothbart’s article shows that she possesses a level of dogged determination and dedication that is admirable. This isn’t a scam — it’s too much work for one.

Playing the Olympics

I want to suggest something else: that the finesse with which she played the rules of the Olympics’ arcane qualifying system is itself a virtuoso performance.

The Olympics exist as a complex endeavor in soft power diplomacy, drawing athletes from around the world to compete in everything from basketball to luge. They are also an extraordinarily involved set of rules and regulations. Even if Swaney’s maneuvering on the half pipe left something to be desired, her maneuvering of this rule system is a stunning achievement. In carefully working her way to the Olympics, Swaney is a poster child for trifling—acknowledging the rules of the games, but not its objectives.

When critics claim Swaney makes light of the work of the games, they are perhaps half right. She has not, reached the level of athletic mastery that has taken most athletes to this year’s games. She has, however, mastered something else: The Olympics themselves. And, in doing so, in placing herself among the top athletes in the world, in dreaming of not Olympic glory, but Olympic participation, she reveals something we should all relish: That even at the Olympics, even among the best athletes in the world, we might be able to experience something as weird and wonderful as play and the pure delight of working your hardest and trying your best at something you may never actually master.