Is Elizabeth Swaney gaming the system?

 

 

By: Brittany Da Silva

 

Elizabeth Swaney has had a unique road to the 2018 Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea. She competed as a Hungarian athlete in freestyle skiing halfpipe, despite being American-born. Swaney could not qualify for the U.S. team, so she decided to pave her own way to the Olympics.

 

As Swaney’s maternal grandparents are from Hungary, she was able to represent a nation other than her country of origin. She has also previously represented team Venezuela in competition. She used to be a skeleton athlete, having only converted to skiing since the age of 25. Now at the age of 33, Swaney had one clear path. Rather than handing any of the impressive jumps or tricks that people are used to seeing in both the skiing and snowboarding halfpipe runs, Swaney had one goal: do not fall.

 

Swaney chose not to perform any tricks; she skied side-to-side down the halfpipe in a very clean – yet slightly boring – qualifying run. Simply by not falling down, she was granted a score by the judges. She clearly had other things on her mind instead of trying to win a gold medal. She must have known that a run like that wouldn’t land her on the podium, as she received scores including 30 out of a potential 100 points. She finished with the lowest score of the entire pack of halfpipe skiers.

 

Unlike most athletes, Swaney was more concerned with growing the sport in Hungary than winning herself a medal. She explained that she wanted to prove to other people that it is never too late to get into freestyle skiing, while also progressing the sport in Hungary. She wanted to inspire other people.

 

It is largely unclear as to whether or not her plan worked, as she has received quite a bit of backlash online for competing at the Olympic level, despite being a mediocre skier at best. She was able to compete because she had achieved a number of top-30 World Cup finishes, required for participation in the Olympic Games.

 

How was she able to achieve this without tricks or grand technical ability? For at least 13 of those top-30 finishes, Swaney competed in much smaller competitions, where simply showing up and doing a clean run earned her a place in the top 30. She also attended competitions that were less popular, hosting less than 30 athletes in total, because all of the top contenders were competing at different locations.

 

The real question is this: Are the people who are sending Swaney hate mail upset by the fact that she was much less experienced than the other athletes on the halfpipe that day? Or are those individuals more upset by the fact that they hadn’t thought of it first?