Sasha Cohen

He is the creme de la creme of men's figure skating, and he has set the bar so high that the point lead that he typically has over his nearest competitor is 20, 30 points.

It's such cushion that everyone thought he can fall two or three times and still win.

And so I think it really took the spectators by surprise.

But then I also know what it's like getting onto the ice, skating last, and knowing that this is your time and you're four minutes away from securing your dream.

And that can be very rattling and frustrating.

It's almost like your system short circuits where you're trying to process so much information coming in and everything's compressed into a few minutes and then it's compressed into each jumping pass.

And it can be just an extraordinary amount of like energy and intensity and nerves just bouncing around in your body, not to mention every thought that's going through your head, because

I find the interesting juxtaposition here is that as an athlete, what we should do is train our body, trust our body, and tell our mind to be quiet.

And so you have different ways to do this.

Like, okay, just breathe in, out, arm goes left, right, out.

But then your mind wants to be involved.

Like, hey, this moment's too important.

I can't let the body just do it by itself.

Like, I need to optimize.

Like, what can I be doing to help?

And then I think that's where you get into a lot of trouble, where the mind just really tries to be involved and perfect each moment.

And that can lead to just...

one millisecond of delay or moving a little bit too quickly and change timing on a jumping pass.

And then I think once you miss one, you're just carrying another set of expectations and disappointment that you can't really process in real time because you have to keep going.

I think it was that culminating moment of like, it's all here.