Bode Miller was the hands down fav to win the downhill ski race at the Winter Games. He finished 8th, a slippery .52 seconds behind Matthias Mayer’s gold medal time of 2:06:23. Clear as ice crystals, Bode failed. But does that make him a failure? Nah! The guy has racked up five Olympic medals in past 15 years, along with 33 World Cup Races. Without doubt, he’s the best America ski racer of the past two decades. And yet, a half a second is damning, isn’t it? But does it have to be? Isn’t it all in your attitude and how you choose to be spun by the media? For us mortals who don’t compete on Mount Olympus, and for the young mortals in our care, life and the progress we make is about what we learn from our mistakes as well as our wins. Or not.

Ty Walker: We’re here to have fun too, right?

On the other side of the mountain, 16 year old Ty Walker came off her flubbed last chance qualifying run on slope style, looked right into the camera, shrugged impishly and laughed. You gotta love that attitude!

I don’t mean to sugar-coat a loss anywhere, especially not in the Olympics where massive amounts of personal and national pride are on the line. (And let’s not forget cash!) But when people get all whiney-nutso when they don’t get gold, something’s outta whack. Like Hannah Kearney, for example. She won gold in the 2010 Winter Games and 27 out of 37 World Cup races since then, but she was so bummed with her bronze medal in the moguls on Saturday she acted like the officials hung a 3-day old dead fish around her neck.

Teachable moment: We don’t live in Lake Wobegon where all the children are “above average.” You win some and you lose some. Buck up. Be a good sport. Try again.