THROUGH THE EYES OF CHAMPIONS & MONA LISA SMILES

I’m still pondering, actually, analyzing the news stories surrounding our heroes, our champions over the last couple of days.  Many hearts were broken for Olympic Snowboarder Star, Shaun White, this week when he failed to medal in Sochi in a sport he made famous.  And people from all walks of life have weighed in on the perhaps not so shocking announcement that 2014 will be Derek Jeter’s last season.  Two very passionate, precise and well-respected athletes carrying with them the look of a champion ready to take on what’s next.

The Flying Tomato, as we have affectionately named him, stated openly Tuesday that today “just wasn’t his day.”  Perhaps, not on the half pipe, but I assure you, Shaun still came out on top.  What most at home Olympic spectators don’t know is that Shaun made someone else’s day.   In a beautifully articulated story posted by The Washington Post this week, Shaun White found his way onto life’s medal stand when Olympic rules kept a Make a Wish Family away from meeting their hero.

“Two cancer survivors had traveled almost 6,000 miles to get within maybe seven feet of their athletic hero and some rule or protocol was going to forbid them from actually meeting,” stated Post writer Mike Wise.  “I don’t know if White has caught more rarefied air in that moment, catapulting himself in one leap over the barricade. I do know one 10-year-old’s life will never be the same.”  White, a survivor of two open heart surgeries as a kid, gives 8% of his 15 million a year to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.   Yet the backlash against White before the games even started, has not stopped.

Shaun had this new look, perhaps new persona on his face the entire time I saw him in Sochi, from the opening ceremony to his performance on the half pipe.  It is the same look that Derek Jeter had midway through the season last year, when I wrote the #BYB piece JETER'S EYES GIVE "IT" AWAY.

Guys like Jeter and White carry with them an overabundance of passion for what they do that it leaks through their expressions and out through their eyes.  The old English proverb, “The eyes are the windows of your soul” may have some truth.  In a recent study conducted by Swedish scientists, “researchers argued that eye structure and personality could be linked because the genes responsible for the development of the iris also play a role in shaping part of the frontal lobe of the brain, which influences personality.”

Taking this one step further, guys like Jeter and White, as much as they are exciting to watch, demonstrating amazing passion for their sports and giving so much enthusiasm to their game play, they have a reflective side too, a side where they contemplate what they need to do and how they need to do it.  They know their sport.  They know their bodies and they are not afraid of pushing themselves to the limit.  But these guys also know when to say when.

White said no to the slope style event and caught a lot of criticism.  According to the Washington Post article, “I had heard Shaun White had become too big for his snowboard bindings. He didn’t hang with other members of the close-knit Team USA community. His “people” shut down half pipes at ski resorts so White could ride by himself. He wasn’t the cool kid we once called the Flying Tomato anymore, a thatch of reddish-orange hair rising 22 feet off a wall of ice.”  But there is always another side to the story, another purpose for the performance we see.  Just as in the way Jeter said goodbye in a very purposeful, very obvious and clear way through a venue, he shied away from in an effort to keep his private life private.

Jeter announced his plans to fans through a media outlet where he had some control, Facebook.  Michael Kay stated in an interview on ESPN that he was surprised that Derek Jeter decided to announce his retirement this way.  “I always thought that his retirement announcement would come on a cold November night after a season had ended and he would say, “that’s it I’m done.”

Instead the private man of Derek Jeter has decided to let the world look a little closer at him and he look a little closer at them and the game that has been so good to him.  Perhaps the New York Times said it all in one sentence.  “When other people got into trouble or said stupid things, you had to read Jeter’s chosen words the way one reads the Mona Lisa’s smile.”

So if we are comparing champions like White and Jeter to the uncanny expression of Mona Lisa, then I have to add one more reference.  I looked at pictures of the greats of the game, guys like Michael Jordan, Ted Williams and Lou Gehrig and I saw something similar to the smiles of Jeter and White- they have depth, they have sincerity and they have poise.  Eyes and expression of champions- they tell a story, if you just look hard enough. 

--Suzie Pinstripe, BYB Opinion Columnist
Twitter: @suzieprof




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