Part of the Olympics’ allure is the drama, the sadness, the emotion. Colorado skier Lyman Currier experienced all of the above as his Olympics ended too early with the worst kind of “pop” earlier this week.
Denver Post writer Jason Blevins reported from the hills at Krasnaya Polyana, Russia, earlier this week: “The heaving sobs. The searing cries. The collapsing embrace into his father’s arms. It wasn’t coming from Lyman Currier’s knee. It was from a dream that dissolved in the first-ever Olympic ski halfpipe.”
“The amount of physical pain was nothing comparatively to the emotion pain I felt and the tears running down my face were in light of that,” the 19-year-old from Boulder told Blevins. “I felt like I had let everybody down. Friends, family, my sponsors, my state, my whole country. It was absolutely heartbreaking. I made it onto this huge stage and just to crash twice and injure myself.”
It’s brutal stuff. So instead of reliving Currier’s sobs, let’s simply go back in time to when the skier — awaiting his score for a flubbed run — saw those Colorado-familiar numbers on the board: 4.20. What a laugh.
