Chapter Twelve
Isaline had known Blaire’s run was gold before it finished.
Knew it in the first split time that flashed green, in the way the cameras tracked Blaire’s line through the compression, and in the roar of the crowd that built as she hit the final pitch.
When Blaire crossed, her name shot to the top. HOLLIS. First place. Gold.
Below Blaire’s name, Isaline watched the rankings reshuffle with brutal efficiency. An Austrian racer’s earlier time claimed bronze. Her name slid from third to fourth.
Fourth!
The cameras panned away from her toward the leader’s chair where Blaire stood, already surrounded by celebration. No one needed footage of almost.
Isaline walked toward the mixed zone with her bib half undone and her skis over her shoulder.
Reporters found her anyway. The Swiss media found her first, then the international media.
She cycled through answers in German, French, and English, hitting every note her media training had drilled into her.
“I’m proud to be here. This is my first Olympic Games, and I’m happy with how I did.”
“The course challenged everyone today. I gave everything I had.”
“Fourth is hard, yes, but the downhill is still coming.”
Isaline had the how to handle the media part down perfectly… Smile. Nod. Thank the team. Mention her father’s support. Redirect to the next race.
Behind the lights, she could see Blaire in the center of her own media scrum, after stepping off the podium with the gold medal around her neck.
The American looked composed, gracious, every inch the champion the world expected.
Isaline felt no bitterness watching her—just a hollow, physical ache, like missing a step in the dark.
She’d been close enough to touch it. Close enough that fourth felt exponentially worse than tenth ever could. Tenth was anonymous. Fourth was the medal that almost was, the proof she belonged printed next to the reminder that belonging didn’t guarantee taking any hardware home.
When the last microphone dropped and the reporters moved on, Isaline walked out of the mixed zone alone.
Her legs felt heavy. Her throat was tight.
She had no idea if she wanted to scream, cry, or replay the entire run in her head until she found the missing hundredths that would have changed everything.
On the bus down from the venue, the Swiss team kept the mood respectable.
Teammates congratulated each other on strong top-tens, swapped notes about wax and conditions, and made plans for recovery sessions before the downhill.
No one pushed Isaline to talk. Someone passed her a water bottle.
Someone else briefly touched her shoulder.
That almost made it worse.
Inside the village housing block, she peeled away with a polite “I just need a shower” before anyone could suggest team dinner or video review.
Her room was exactly as she’d left it hours earlier.
Her bed was made, and the photo of her and her mom was still tucked in the drawer, waiting for the moments she needed to remember someone had believed in her long before she was racing for gold medals in the Olympics.
She dropped onto the mattress still wearing half her race gear, boots unlaced but not off, bib crumpled on the floor. The empty space where a medal should’ve been around her neck felt heavier than any hardware ever had.
The replay of her run looped uninvited behind her eyes. One turn a shade too conservative. There was one section where she might have trusted herself more and held the tuck for an extra heartbeat. She’d skied clean. She’d skied smart. And it still hadn’t been enough.
Tears pricked hot and insistent. She tried to force them back on sheer habit—racers didn’t cry over fourth, not when they still had another event coming—but for once, the tears didn’t listen. They poured down her face and soaked into the sheets, silent and relentless.
She pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes until she saw stars.
A knock came eventually. Soft, patient, unmistakably Reto.
She sat up, swiped at her face, and croaked, “Come in.”
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Seeing her sitting on the edge of the bed with red eyes knocked some of the older brother teasing right out of him. He didn’t try to fix it. Didn’t tell her fourth was still incredible. Didn’t remind her the downhill was coming.
He just sat down beside her, shoulder brushing hers, and let the silence hold.
After a minute, he spoke. “Dad wants to talk to you when you’re ready. Not a coach talk.”
Isaline only nodded because her throat was too tight to answer.
She washed her face in the tiny sink, changed into team sweats. Her legs felt heavier than they had after the race.
The small meeting room smelled like stale coffee and old heating vents. Thankfully, someone had left the TV on mute. Olympic highlights cycled through moments that belonged to other people. Matthias turned it off as Isaline slid into the chair across from him.
Outside, the village buzzed with evening routines—dinner rushes, recovery sessions, athletes laughing their way through the pressure. In here, the quiet pressed close.
He didn’t open with video review or line analysis. He simply looked at her, really looked, in a way that made her chest tighten.
“How does your body feel?”
“Fine,” she said automatically. “Knee’s good. No tweaks.”
He nodded. “And your head?”
“Same.”
A beat passed. He let the lie breathe. “And fourth?” His voice stayed level. “How does that feel?”
The careful wall she’d built when facing the media had cracked. She looked down at her hands, which still bore faint indentations from pole grips.
“Like I did everything but win.” Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Understandable.”
The simplicity of it landed hard. No softening, no false comfort. Just acknowledgment of wanting a win and not getting it.
He leaned back, fingers laced together, gaze distant in a way she recognized from childhood. It was the expression he wore when replaying old races in his mind.
“I won Olympic gold,” he said quietly. “People remember that. What they don’t see are the races I buried. The ones where I skied my best and still lost. The ones where I played it safe, missed a podium, and spent the flight home hating myself for not trusting the race I wanted.”
Isaline blinked. He never talked about those races. Never admitted doubt.
He continued. “I spent years thinking the only version of myself worth anything was the one holding hardware. I missed entire seasons of joy because I couldn’t see past results. Teammates became competitors. Training became a burden. I loved skiing, and somehow I made it feel like punishment.”
His eyes refocused, landing on her with an intensity that was pure vulnerability.
“The arena isn’t just the podium, Isaline.
It’s the start gate. It’s the choice to step in again when your body’s been broken, when you’ve been bumped off the board, when every logical reason says to quit.
The world celebrates medals. But what changes you—what makes you—is showing up in the arena when the world is stacked against you. ”
Isaline forced words past the lump in her throat. “I wanted a medal so badly, Dad.”
“I know.” His voice softened without losing its steel. “And that wanting doesn’t make you weak. It makes you brave. But if you let one number, whether that be fourth, tenth, or first, decide whether you’re worthy of being here, you’ll never enjoy a single second of this.”
She watched his hands. They were weathered and scarred from decades of pole straps and frostbite. Hands that had held gold and yet still carried regret.
“Medals tarnish,” he said. “What stays is who you were when you kept showing up. The mornings you got back on snow after crashes. The nights you called home from some far away place and pretended you were fine. The races where you gave everything, and it still wasn’t enough on the clock.”
He leaned forward and met her gaze square.
“I have watched you fight your way back twice. I watched you stand in that start house today knowing our entire country was expecting magic from you. You gave them a committed run. You skied your own race. That’s what matters, Isa.”
“It doesn’t feel like enough.”
“I know,” he said again. “But, you are enough. I am proud of you.”
No conditions. No “but if you’d just.” No attachment to placement or time differential.
Her dad was just proud.
The flood of tears she’d been holding off in public finally broke free, quiet and hot. He didn’t try to stop them. He just handed her a towel and let her cry without commentary.
When she finally caught her breath, voice rough, she asked, “What if the downhill goes the same way?”
“Then you’ll be fourth twice,” he said simply. “And you’ll still be the woman who skied two Olympic races at speeds most people will never touch. You’ll still be someone I’m proud to call my daughter.”
She wiped her face. “That’s not a very good go-win-gold pep talk.”
A rare smile ghosted across his mouth. “I’m not trying to fix you. I’m trying to remind you that you’re not broken.”
Later, alone in her room with the door locked and the village noise reduced to a distant hum, Isaline opened her tablet and pulled up the Super-G replay. The screen glowed pale blue in the dim light.
Her finger hovered over the play button. Every instinct screamed to dissect the run frame by frame to find the exact moment she’d lost those precious hundredths. To prove to herself that she’d failed.
She pressed play.
The first viewing was exactly what she expected: ruthless self-criticism.
Too cautious in entering the compression.
Lost speed on the transition. Should have trusted the inside line through the final gates.
Her jaw clenched watching herself cross the finish, believing for three perfect seconds that bronze was hers.
Then she stopped the video and started again.