The way I came into contact with Marcus is the series of odd coincidences. In June 2021, I participated in a virtual networking event called "Language Café," where people from many countries come together and having casual chats in multiple languages. The event was held on Zoom, and participants were divided into different breakout rooms according to the language they had signed up for. Initially, I had opted for the Spanish room, but for some reason, organizers put me in the English room instead. I had considered for a moment whether I should switch back to Spanish, but I thought again and decided not to. "My Spanish is too poor to have a proper conversation anyway" - I reckoned. So I stayed in room 6, hosted by Marcus - a Swedish twenty-something, and supported by Thien - his Vietnamese fellow. As the event aimed to create a place for attendees to practice languages, the host and supporter were supposed to facilitate and encourage others to speak, not sharing too much about themselves. I thought they had done a great job as I did have a wonderful time chatting with other participants yet knowing very little about facilitators. After leaving zoom, all I could recall were that Marcus is a figure skating coach, and Thien is a medical postgraduate in the US. Though I haven't thought of those details much, I put them on my contact list as a habit. "Someday, I might want to invite them to join my project. Who knows?"
And that day came, sooner than I expected.
A month-ish after the event, I was binge-watching the Olympics Tokyo 2020 when youtube recommended me some videos of Yuzuru Hanyu performing in the Olympics. I clicked on them and quickly got so hung up on figure skating. The week after, I spent every spare minute watching as many programs as I could find and educating myself on that sport. I even considered taking it up in the future. One day, a video of a figure skater performing a beautiful triple axel jump (a special technique in figure skating) appeared on my youtube feeds. It turned out that the athlete was Marcus Björk - a two-time national silver medalist in Sweden. Goodness me, it was him who hosted my room at Language Cafe! I was literally on cloud nine when I found out that and decided to invite him to join my project. He agreed, thankfully, and two weeks after, we had a zoom call.
Since Marcus was a kid, he had shown a genuine interest in skating and appeared to have a gift for it, so his mom put him in a skating school. He started his professional training at 11 and skated almost continuously until he was 23. Throughout his career, Marcus had consistently placed in the top 3 in the Swedish championship. In 2012, he competed at World Junior Championships and reached the free skate. He took a break for several years and just made a comeback last fall. Currently, he's working part-time as a coach and spending most of his days studying for his master's in Asian Studies. Marcus is also the chairman of the conservative and classical liberal student association at his university.
"You have a lot on your plate!" - I said.
"Well, yeah, I mean, I want to live my life to the fullest, and I like to multitask. I get provoked easily by people who don't have ambitions. Sometimes, I just want to slap them in the face and scream at them like: "How can you be like this when there is so much interesting going on in the world? How can you not be interested in anything around you?" Urgh! Every time I meet someone like that, my mood quickly drops through the floor." - He replied.
More than once, I expressed to him my admiration for the beauty of figure skating, which, for me, is the perfect incorporation of elegant, dramatic, and emotional dance choreography. How ecstatic to watch skaters moving so effortlessly and gracefully on the flawless white of the ice rink! The problem is that I only see things on the surface and have no clue how hard they have trained before the performance and what they have to sacrifice to go pro. Thanks to Marcus, now I have a broader view of what it's like to be a professional figure skater in particular and to be an athlete in general.
"Going pro is very, very time-consuming. When I was in school, I barely had free time. Every weekday I would go to the rink and skate before and after school, so you can guess my day was much longer and busier than any student at my age. Weekends were the time for competitions, and I was frequently out of town for the whole weekend and went back on Monday to start that routine over again. I didn't want to give up on either study or sport, so I tried my best to keep them both at the highest level of competence. I was lucky because I didn't struggle with school at all. Even with my first bachelor's degree, I had managed to finish it while being on the national team. Obviously, I didn't have much time left to hang out, see friends, or have any other interests. I found myself in a constant struggle to be on time and to keep up with my schedule for everything, and, yeah, it's exhausting!
However, I suppose the worst thing is the unforgiving moment when you're an athlete, and you have been relentlessly training for weeks or months for the competition. But when the time comes, you mess it up, and all your effort goes down the drain. If you watch the Olympics - the World Championship - you'd better know that all figure skaters there are the best in the world. I'm sure that they've been skating those programs clean (skating with no errors) every day for at least four months. Nevertheless, at that very moment on that very day, some of them fall once or twice, and it's over. It's just very unforgiving. It's the nature of sports."
Marcus' sharing has made me thinking about my way of watching sports so far. Now that I know a glimpse of the hardship that sportspeople have all been through, I feel a strong sense of empathy towards them. Athletes are humans, too. They always try to do their best and produce fabulous performances for the audience, and they all deserve respect, love, and empathy, whether they win or lose the competition. It's how they pursue and persist in sports that matters. I'm not an avid sports fan, yet I understand that sports are competitive, and winning is often the main objective. However, what if we can shift our focus from the results (the ranking, scores, or titles) to the process (how we get better after each day)? Then I believe sports will be much more enjoyable and beneficial, both physically and mentally, for everyone. Do you think so too?
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