Ilia Malinin is by all accounts the best male figure skater in the world. The winner of the last two World Championships has broken new ground with his technical brilliance and exquisite artistry. He was the overwhelming favorite to win the gold medal last week at the Winter Olympics in Milan. But when he took the ice as the final skater, something went very wrong. In one of the biggest upsets in the history of the sport, Malinin grew hesitant, fell twice, and never regained the timing and composure he is known for. In a disastrous and heartbreaking four minutes, he tumbled from first to eighth.

In a post-race interview, Malinin said that “going into this competition, I felt really good this whole day. Feeling really solid. I just thought that all I needed to do was trust the process that I’ve always been doing.” But “the pressure and the nerves” hit hard. “So it was really just something that overwhelmed me and I just felt like I had no control.”

As the stunned spectators began to file out, the arena DJ put Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” on the loudspeakers.

I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning, I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own

I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemy’s eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing

Now the old king is dead, long live the king
One minute, I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

That may have been a harsh choice for that particular moment, but it echoed the truthful reminder spoken to us every Ash Wednesday:

Remember that you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.

The coincidence of Olympian failure and Ash Wednesday has happened before, and I believe that the falls touch us more deeply than the triumphs, summoning us to self-compassion in the dust and ashes of our own defeats. So in the light of this Olympics’ unfortunate example, I offer here the Ash Wednesday reflection I first posted ten years ago:

In the 1988 Winter Olympics, American speed skater Dan Jansen, the best in the world, was the consensus pick to win the 500 and 1000 meter events. On the morning of the 500 final, he learned his sister had just died from leukemia. With his focus clearly elsewhere, he fell on the first turn of his race and never finished. He would also fall and fail in the 1000 meters. At the 1992 Olympics, he again failed to win the medals expected of him. The 1994 Olympics offered him one last chance, and he came to the line of the 500 meter race as the clear favorite, the only skater ever to break 36 seconds, which he had done four times. But after one slight slip on the ice, he finished out of the medals yet again.

Ash Wednesday came just after that race, and during the liturgy I reflected on Jansen’s story in my homily. Although Jansen would finally win a gold medal a few days later (in the one race where he was an underdog), it was his “failures” that resonated with people. After the liturgy, a therapist in the congregation told me that many of her clients that week had talked with her about Jansen’s story, and how much it moved them. If the world’s greatest skater could fall, then maybe it was all right for them to fall as well. You don’t have to be a hero, only your own flawed and unfinished self.

In his youth, the poet David Whyte was hiking in the Himalayas when he came to a deep chasm. The only way across was a rickety old rope bridge with many missing slats. Although he was a confident, experienced mountaineer, he suddenly froze at the prospect of traversing the abyss on so treacherous a path. He sat down on the ground and stared at the bridge for hours, unable to proceed. “There are times when the hero has to sit down,” he said later. “At some bridges in life the part of you that always gets it done has to sit down.” Then an old Tibetan woman came along, gathering yak dung for fuel. She walked with a limp. “Namaste,” she said with a smile. Then she turned and limped across the bridge. Immediately, without thinking, he rose up and followed. Sometimes, he realized, it is “the old interior angel,” the unheroic, limping, unequipped part of ourselves, that gets us to the other side.

Remember that you are dust, and no hero. Whether your Lent will be a time of giving up, going deep, or reaching out, may it always be done with a generous measure of self-compassion.