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 this 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 crucial difficult instances of my entire life.”
He’s grieving his 2022 Olympic second that by no means was.
The morning after serving to the US win a silver medal within the determine skating crew occasion, Zhou examined optimistic for the coronavirus and needed to withdraw from the lads’s particular person occasion scheduled to start the subsequent day.
Caught in a small resort room for every week whereas he recovered from cold-like signs, he adopted the occasion on the web, too crushed to observe on TV. Afterward, he mentioned he was certain he might have gained no less than 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 night time, 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 mentioned he stood at that safety checkpoint for what felt like an hour arguing his case. In spite of everything, he was not contagious, had examined adverse 14 instances in a row and had possibly a day or two left in his official post-isolation interval of avoiding crowds and what was referred to as “nonessential actions,” he mentioned. May the guards see his facet and have some mercy? May they not enable him this final potential 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 every of his coaches, mentioned.
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 critical that at instances he has referred to as his coaches from his mattress, crying, Meekins mentioned, as a result of he couldn’t bear to go to the rink. He questions whether or not his life’s work was value it and asks, “Why me?”
It’s a good query. He double masked. He wore a face protect on flights. In China, he ate alone within the Olympic cafeteria, fastidiously knocking down his masks between bites. He usually stored such a distance from others throughout the pandemic that he turned excruciatingly lonely, he mentioned 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., mentioned to reporters on Tuesday. “I’m nonetheless at the moment in the midst 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.
Typically, Meekins mentioned, he can see the burden of unhappiness 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 mentioned. “I might inform it’s occupied nonetheless attempting to course of what occurred.”
Meekins and Tom Zakrajsek, Zhou’s different foremost coach, hold a detailed eye on Zhou to verify he feels supported. They’ve carried out quite a lot of listening. They’ve given him a number of house.
Additionally, a sports activities psychologist from the US Olympic coaching middle usually comes to observe Zhou’s practices. The 2 have spoken quite a bit up to now a number of weeks as Zhou works by these waves of robust feelings.
It’s essential for him to go to worlds, his coaches mentioned. Zhou might 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 liked 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 last, 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 mentioned.
Zhou has had the identical feeling. He has generally thought it might be simple to simply skip worlds and stroll away from the ache and dangerous recollections. His research at Brown College await him. After which he thinks, “I ought to possibly simply attempt to overlook about the whole lot, simply get on the ice, simply go for it. Take the shot. Who is aware of? Possibly it is going to prove properly.”
Maintaining the frustration out of his thoughts, nonetheless, has been a battle, he mentioned: “I step onto the ice and I’m immediately reminded of the whole lot that occurred.”
Nonetheless, he informed reporters — and sure himself — that “in all probability 90, I don’t know, 95 p.c of different folks would have already given up.” And he’s not a type of folks.
He mentioned simply with the ability to take that first step and go to worlds would make him actually proud. He’s attempting to will it to occur: Get on that airplane. Placed on that costume. Step out on that ice. Deep down, he mentioned, the motivation to try this nonetheless drives him.
“Life actually needs to get me down proper now,” he mentioned. “However I’m not able to go down with no battle.”
