An ode to Elizabeth Marian Swaney

The 2018 Winter Olympics featured 2,921 of the world’s best Olympians. And an American skier sporting a Hungarian flag named Elizabeth Marian Swaney.

She competed in the half-pipe for Hungary. There wasn’t much in the way of tricks. She did grab her skies at one point. That was about it. You can watch her run on the BBC website.

The reason she was competing for Hungary is that they have no selection criteria. Unlike the first two nations, she tried to compete for. But, having enough of a varied lineage, is eligible to compete for three.

There is much debate as to whether she was the best, or worst, Olympian.

The answer is “the worst”, of course, but I still like her. Like many others have commented, she gives the rest of us hope. I’ve been running for 25 years. My vo2 max is 45. That’s what an average man of my age would have as standard. Some athletes have double that. I’m never going to be Mo Farah because I don’t have the innate ability.

But I could be Elizabeth Marian Swaney, because she doesn’t have any innate ability, either.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 4th, 2018 at 11:00 am and is filed under Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.