How to Hack Your Way into the Olympics

What if the secret to Olympic glory wasn't talent?

Aug 06, 2024

In a world of elite athletes, one average skier rewrote the rules of Olympic qualification. She never landed a single trick, yet she competed in the Winter Olympics.

This is Elizabeth Swaney's story.

Elizabeth grew up in California. She was a normal Californian girl with an extraordinary dream: to be in the Olympic Games. Unlike most Olympic athletes, she wasn't a prodigy or a product of elite sports academies. She was just an average skier who figured out how to outsmart the system.

While at college, she started looking for ways to become an Olympian. After thinking about bobsleigh and skeleton, she chose freestyle skiing, the halfpipe.

Her approach was unconventional but clever. Elizabeth studied the Olympic rules and made a plan:

Go to at least 30 events worldwide
Finish each run without falling
Slowly get enough points to make it

She couldn't make the U.S. team, so she started skiing for Hungary in 2015, because her grandparents were born there.

Over the years, Elizabeth became a fixture at freestyle skiing World Cup events. While others tried risky tricks and often fell, Elizabeth played it safe, always finishing her runs. This plan, plus going to events with fewer than 30 people, helped her move up in rank.

The Olympic quota system also played a crucial role in her qualification. There's a limit on how many skiers each country can send. Elizabeth's rank of 34th was enough to get her into the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

At the Olympics, Elizabeth's performance was described as "perfectly mediocre." She finished her runs without falling but didn't try any hard tricks. Her best score was 31.40, putting her last in the contest, 13.60 points behind Laila Friis-Salling of Denmark, who fell in both her runs.

Elizabeth's Olympic appearance sparked a global conversation. Some liked her clever plan, while others didn't think she should be there. Regardless of the debate, Elizabeth had turned her dream into reality.

Elizabeth's story challenges our perceptions of what it means to be an Olympic athlete. It shows that sometimes, doing great things comes from just showing up and not giving up. Many skiers better than Elizabeth don't think they can make the Olympics. So they never try.

Instead, Elizabeth believed in herself and kept trying, over and over. She chose to think outside the box and managed to crush the box.

You live in a box.

You drive in a box.

You work in a box.

One day you will be buried in a box.

Don't live your life in a box.

Sometimes, the path to the Olympics of life isn't paved with gold medals, but with clever strategy and unwavering determination. There is nothing more common than unsuccessful talented people.

Challenge yourself to think beyond limitations. Like Elizabeth, find your own path to success, even if it means redefining what success looks like. Live your life as if there are no boxes holding you back.

Crush the box.