Focus: A Lesson Learned in Front of the World

When I qualified for the Freestyle Skiing World Cup tour, I began competing with athletes from all over the world. As an unknown skier my first year on the tour, I had no sponsors so my parents had to support me financially. I wanted to prove to them that I wasn’t going to waste their money, and I did.

Four times in the first year, I placed in the top three, even winning in my fourth World Cup competition ever. By the end of the season, I found myself in ninth place worldwide. I couldn’t wait to take the videotape of my contest jumps home to show my parents how effectively I’d used their money.

I popped the tape in the VCR and we sat down to watch it together. Now, while it seems long when you are in the air, an aerialist is actually airborne for about three seconds — as compared to the top basketball players, who are airborne for one. I competed in a total of 10 contests that first season, with two jumps per event, so the whole tape was about sixty seconds long.

After we viewed it, I eagerly sat at the edge of my seat, awaiting my parents’ response. We sat there in silence for another thirty seconds. I figured they must be pondering the praise they were going to pile on me, but my father, ever the comedian, had other thoughts. He finally turned to me and asked, “I just spent fifteen thousand bucks for thirty seconds?”

Being caught off guard, I had no clever reply. But I did heatedly explain that a lot of work went into those thirty seconds, and that I had to really make sure I was “on” when it counted most. My dad quickly agreed on the importance of working hard and making sure I took my "A" game to those key moments.

Two years later, bringing enough "A" games to the competition hill helped me qualify for my first Olympics. I was so excited that I might have a chance to win the medal I’d dreamed of since I was five years old.

I quickly learned that it wasn’t just my expectation, but that of my family, my friends, my hometown, my home state and my country. The hundreds of letters people sent to encourage me unintentionally threw a world of weight on my shoulders. Everyone had expectations about me bringing home an Olympic medal for the US.

Their hopes had some basis. As I entered the Olympic Games, I was ranked third in the world. There was certainly a chance I might bring home one of those big, shiny medallions. Though some people would find this motivating, I just found it added more unwanted pressure.

I arrived at the games a few days before the opening ceremonies and had to wait a full two weeks before my competition began. At the Olympics, aerialists have a semifinals contest where all competitors take two different jumps and add their scores together. The top twelve women and top twelve men qualify for finals, starting over with a clean slate.

I woke up on the morning of semi-finals and was blown away by how much greater the pressure felt for this event. The world was suddenly interested in aerial skiing, when most people couldn’t have told you what the event was just two months earlier.

One of my coaches told me to try to imagine it was like every other day — just like training. Well, the problem was that every other day I didn’t have 30,000 people surrounding the landing hill and another 20 million watching from their armchairs back home. It was pretty hard to imagine this was like "every other day."

The random run order listed me last to jump. This meant I had to wait for all the other women to jump before it was time for me to take my place on the hill. Finally, it was my turn to slide into starting position. I somehow managed to calm myself enough to push off for my first ever Olympic jump.

I went off the ramp, did two black flips through the air and executed a full twist on my second flip. My form was impeccable, with a perfectly straight position, and I landed the jump with very little impression on the snow. Being the last competitor, I would know my first-round standing right after my score went up on the board.

My score showed up on the scoreboard almost immediately, and in the bottom corner, right under the word Rank, flashed the number 1. I was at the Olympics and I was in first place! I started thinking that maybe I could bring home one of those renowned shiny medals.

I could follow in the footsteps of some of my Olympic gold medal idols by appearing on the Late Show with David Letterman, and my hometown could have a parade for me. I wasn’t even in the finals yet and I was already thinking about winning a gold medal.

I went back up to the top of the hill with images of medals floating in my head. And with these thoughts of Olympic glory, I forgot about everything else going into my second jump.

I did two flips and two twists, and thought my jump was impeccable — but it wasn’t. I finished my last flip and realized I was still three feet off the ground. My skis skimmed past the ground and I cascaded on my back along the snowy hill.

I quickly bounced to my feet in hopes of minimizing the judges’ impressions of my fall. I skied to a stop at the bottom of the hill and awaited my score. As luck would have it, the electricity went out just then and the scoreboard went dark. I was the last female athlete to jump, so my impending score would tell me specifically if I would be one of the 12 women going on to finals.

I had to wait a full five minutes before they announced my score. As I was waiting, I thought about how a few other women had touched a hand down on landing or had poor form in the air. I was in first place after the first round, so could literally drop 11 places and still make it to finals, where the top dozen athletes would start over with a clean slate.

After much anticipation, a booming voice came over the loudspeaker. “From the United States, Nikki Stone ... 13th place!”

Thirteenth place! I couldn’t believe it! I hadn’t just missed finals, I’d missed by a mere 57th of a point. Less than one point out of more than 200 points. It was devastating.

And what was even harder to take was that the woman in 12th place, the athlete I would have bumped out of finals with just over half a point more, went on to win the first ever Olympic medal in the sport of aerial skiing. That woman was Lina Tcherjazova, an extremely talented aerialist from Uzbekistan.

I wasn’t disappointed because I thought Lina didn’t deserve that medal, she definitely did, I was disappointed because I basically handed it to her.

I had to watch as she took her place on the top of the Olympic podium and had that shiny gold medal draped around her neck. I held back tears as the Uzbekistan anthem started to play. As I sat and listened to her proud national anthem, I realized that I learned a very valuable lesson: if I was going to start building my hard outer shell, I had to make sure I was focused on the task at hand.

I was thinking of the “big picture” rather than what I needed to do in order to achieve that big picture. My thoughts were bouncing everywhere except where they should have been: on the elements of my jump.

Lina may have had dreams of gold in the back of her mind but she was able to shelve those thoughts long enough to focus on the specifics of the task at hand.

I always hated when life taught me these crucial lessons at such significant moments, before the eyes of the world. Regardless of whether I wanted the lesson or not, it was presented to me and I would be a fool not to learn from it. There are so many distractions in life and if we don’t build a hard shell to defend against its enticements, we could be sucked into mediocrity.

********** Motivational Weight Management Tip **********

I’ve had the great honor of working with some of the Biggest Loser contestants and it has inspired me to leave motivational diet, health, and wellness tips at the end of all of my blogs. These tools have been driven from actual advice I’ve shared.

This week's tip: People are often afraid of setting health and fitness goals because of fear that they won’t reach them. Remember that you may not reach all your goals, but you’ll certainly go further than you would have if you didn’t set any!

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At the Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, Nikki Stone became America’s first-ever Olympic Champion in the sport of aerial skiing. What made this performance so unbelievable, was the fact that less than two years earlier, a chronic spinal injury prevented her from standing, much less walking or skiing off an aerial jump.

Nikki’s achievements have carried far beyond the slopes as she now works as an accomplished motivational speaker for national and international corporations and motivational coach for a new national Biggest Loser program.

Nikki has also recently released the inspirational bestseller When Turtles Fly: Secrets of Successful People Who Know How to Stick Their Necks Out (with contributors Lindsey Vonn, Shaun White, Tommy Hilfiger, and more).

For more information, please visit www.WhenTurtlesFly.com and www.NikkiStone.com.

Edited by Malu Banuelos

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