yarrr, ye scurvy boy-king, halt ye whinin'

Every now and again, he would step into the action. Twice he was chosen to take his team’s penalty shot — a shot from seven meters away that was apparently designed to make goalkeepers look even more ridiculous than usual — and twice he scored on that. But other than that, he seemed oddly at peace standing off to the side by himself. Anyway, that’s how it seemed to me.

I only saw one moment of real brilliance from him. At one point in the second half, after Iceland had turned the game into a route, he had the ball on his own side of half court. He saw an open teammate downcourt and started to pass to him and then noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that the British goalkeeper, White, was running over to defend the pass. So, this tall man from Iceland simply faked the pass and then unleashed an 80-foot shot into the open net.

...“You want to play well for long enough that you leave with a medal around your neck,” he said. “That is great. But in the end, it is not about medals. … It is the journey that stirs us.

Holy Reykjavik, Batman. Who the heck is this guy? Five minutes ago, he was throwing a little ball into a net, and suddenly he sounded like he was preparing his Nobel Prize speech.

...The Olympics are so gigantic, with so many athletes, each one of them representing not only a single dream, but also the dreams of so many of their family and friends and neighbors and communities and cities and states and countries. We all have to simplify because it’s too big, so we concentrate on Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps and Gabby Douglas and Jessica Ennis and some promising athlete from the neighborhood who swam eight hours a day or ran nonstop at the local track or practiced her gymnastics all day after school. But the truth is, you could walk into any Olympic arena and find a story.

from this article
"Meet Olafur Stefansson: The Coolest Guy at the Olympics" by Joe Posnanski