After a lifetime of coaching for the Olympics and making it there as a determine skater twice, Vincent Zhou now has moments when it’s too painful for him to consider the Winter Video games, or to even go close to his skates.
Zhou expects to compete on the planet championships in France subsequent week. However after what occurred to him finally month’s Beijing Olympics, he’s enduring what he calls “one of the difficult instances of my complete life.”
He’s grieving his 2022 Olympic second that by no means was.
The morning after serving to america win a silver medal within the determine skating crew occasion, Zhou examined optimistic for the coronavirus and needed to withdraw from the boys’s particular person occasion scheduled to start the following day.
Caught in a small lodge room for every week whereas he recovered from cold-like signs, he adopted the occasion on the web, too crushed to look at on TV. Afterward, he stated he was positive he may have received a minimum of the bronze medal.
Zhou, 21, was launched from isolation in time to carry out within the determine skating gala, an occasion purely held as fan leisure. However that evening, when Zhou tried to board a bus to the closing ceremony along with his teammates, safety officers stopped him, insisting that he had not cleared Covid protocols.
In a name with reporters on Tuesday, Zhou stated he stood at that safety checkpoint for what felt like an hour arguing his case. In any case, he was now not contagious, had examined unfavorable 14 instances in a row and had perhaps a day or two left in his official post-isolation interval of avoiding crowds and what was known as “nonessential actions,” he stated. May the guards see his facet and have some mercy? May they not permit him this final doable second of pleasure at a devastating Olympics that had gone so incorrect for him?
His pleading went nowhere.
“He couldn’t even have that tiny token of closure,” Drew Meekins, one in all his coaches, stated.
Now Zhou is again coaching in Colorado Springs, the place a post-Olympic fog has kicked in. Many Olympians say this era after the Video games is especially tough as a result of they go from an adrenaline excessive to an excessive low, the place they’re devoid of bodily and emotional vitality. This sense even has a reputation: the Olympic hangover.
In Zhou’s case, the hangover has been so severe that at instances he has known as his coaches from his mattress, crying, Meekins stated, as a result of he couldn’t bear to go to the rink. He questions whether or not his life’s work was price it and asks, “Why me?”
It’s a good query. He double masked. He wore a face defend on flights. In China, he ate alone within the Olympic cafeteria, rigorously knocking down his masks between bites. He typically saved such a distance from others through the pandemic that he turned excruciatingly lonely, he stated final month.
And but, he examined optimistic.
“I’m having a tough time conserving myself collectively proper now speaking about it,” Zhou, who’s from Palo Alto, Calif., stated to reporters on Tuesday. “I’m nonetheless at the moment in the course of issues. I’m undoubtedly not out of it but.”
To win again management of his profession after Covid had rendered him helpless over it, Zhou dove proper again into coaching after getting back from China. The transition, although, from the trauma of the Video games to coaching for the world championships has been rocky. As Meekins has identified, grief is available in waves.
Generally, Meekins stated, he can see the burden of disappointment Zhou is carrying with him when Zhou walks into the rink. His head is down. His shoulders droop.
“You’ll be able to simply inform that his thoughts is so busy,” Meekins stated. “I may inform it’s occupied nonetheless making an attempt to course of what occurred.”
Meekins and Tom Zakrajsek, Zhou’s different foremost coach, hold a detailed eye on Zhou to ensure he feels supported. They’ve completed a number of listening. They’ve given him a lot of house.
Additionally, a sports activities psychologist from america Olympic coaching middle typically comes to look at Zhou’s practices. The 2 have spoken lots prior to now a number of weeks as Zhou works by means of these waves of sturdy feelings.
It’s essential for him to go to worlds, his coaches stated. Zhou may lastly discover that closure. It additionally would possibly remind him of what skating was like earlier than Beijing. It had by no means been higher. In some ways, he had by no means beloved it extra.
Within the fall, he beat the three-time world champion Nathan Chen, handing him his first loss in additional than three years. He additionally certified for his first Grand Prix remaining, the place the highest of the highest skaters go face to face each season.
“My feeling is that Vincent competing on the world championships, regardless of how he finishes, goes to be a present of how brave he’s and the way he’s a shining instance of somebody who got here again from excessive adversity,” Zakrajsek stated.
Zhou has had the identical feeling. He has generally thought it will be simple to only skip worlds and stroll away from the ache and unhealthy recollections. His research at Brown College await him. After which he thinks, “I ought to perhaps simply attempt to overlook about all the things, simply get on the ice, simply go for it. Take the shot. Who is aware of? Possibly it is going to prove properly.”
Preserving the frustration out of his thoughts, nevertheless, has been a wrestle, he stated: “I step onto the ice and I’m immediately reminded of all the things that occurred.”
Nonetheless, he informed reporters — and certain himself — that “most likely 90, I don’t know, 95 % of different individuals would have already given up.” And he’s not a type of individuals.
He stated simply with the ability to take that first step and go to worlds would make him actually proud. He’s making an attempt to will it to occur: Get on that airplane. Placed on that costume. Step out on that ice. Deep down, he stated, the motivation to try this nonetheless drives him.
“Life actually desires to get me down proper now,” he stated. “However I’m not able to go down with no struggle.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/sports activities/olympics/vincent-zhou-figure-skating-world-championships.html
