In competition, when we fall, we get up, and then we keep competing.
youTube contributor Mintaka Alnilam has done a split screen comparison of Jeremy Abbott's SP at National and at the Olympics where he had that horrific fall.
It's instructive that when he decided to keep on skating he swung into his program to give his best performance for the audience and the judges.
There's only a couple of places where he's even close to the choreography that was planned for the program. He was improvising throughout, and he.kept.competing. In Yiddish that would be a 'mensch', that is, a person of integrity and honor as well as possessing strength of character.
Here then is the comparison of the two programs split screen.
That's a real competitor! He and Mao Asada both showed how to come back (albeit in different ways). Kind of wish IJS allowed for some sort of "Bringing it on" points that they could give for impressive recoveries like this. But I think that also is at least in part what separates the top flight athletes from the rest of the pack.
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