The Clock Doesn't Care

16 years ago today, a clock satisfactorily answered everyone’s questions.

No panel of judges. No style points. No committee deciding who deserved what. A sled, a track, gravity, ice, and a clock that doesn’t care about your story, your feelings, or your last name.

3 minutes and 24.46 seconds across four runs. Fastest time wins. Period.

I was just in Cortina watching the 2026 Olympic bobsled competition in a place I raced many times during my career. And it reminded me of something the world is slowly forgetting:

There is something sacred about a result you cannot argue with.

In bobsled, the sled doesn’t know if you grew up rich or poor. The ice doesn’t care what school you went to. The clock at the bottom has no idea if you’re well-connected or well-liked. You push, you load, you ride, and at the bottom, a number appears. That number is the truth. The whole truth. And there is a profound beauty in that.

I found this sport on the internet in 2001. I wasn’t recruited. Nobody tapped me on the shoulder. I saw an opportunity, showed up to a combine, and either ran fast enough or I didn’t. For 10 years after that, every single day was an audition. There were 20 guys who would have done anything to take my seat in that sled, and I knew every one of them by name. That reality never left me. Not for a single breakfast, a single training session, a single run.

And that pressure, that relentless, uncomfortable, beautiful pressure, is the thing that made February 27, 2010 mean what it meant.

· · ·

We talk a lot today about removing friction, reducing pressure, and protecting people from the discomfort of competition. And I understand the instinct. I do. Some of it is genuinely compassionate and long overdue.

But let’s be careful that in protecting people from losing, we don’t take from them what it feels like to truly earn something. I think about this with my own kids. I think about it with the 450,000 students in Classroom Champions programs. And I think about it every time I work with a leader who's trying to build something that lasts.

Because that feeling, the one where the clock stops and the number next to your country's name is the smallest on the board, isn't just joy. It’s the accumulation of every 5 AM alarm, every rep that made you sick, every moment you chose the hard thing when the easy thing was right there. That feeling is compound interest on discipline, and there is no shortcut to it. There is no hack. You cannot manifest it. You have to earn it with your body and your mind, over years, in the cold, when no one is watching.

Our team, Night Train, broke a 62-year gold medal drought and was inducted into the Team USA Hall of Fame alongside the Miracle on Ice. Not because we wanted it more — everybody wants it. We broke it because our pilot, the late, great Steven Holcomb, learned to drive a bobsled nearly blind and then relearned it with new eyes. Because Justin Olsen, Curt Tomasevicz, and I pushed that sled with a combined output that left literally nothing in reserve. Because for an entire year leading up to Vancouver, we made thousands of small, disciplined, boring decisions that nobody would ever write about, that would never make a highlight reel, that compounded into four runs down a mountain that changed our lives.

That is what meritocracy actually looks like. Not a word on a poster. Not a debate online. The real thing. Measured in hundredths of a second.

· · ·

It would be easy to read all of that and nod along. I already do the hard work. I already earn it every day. Maybe you do.

But here's a question worth sitting with:

Where in your life have you eliminated the clock?

The higher you climb in a company, a career, any kind of leadership, the easier it becomes to insulate yourself from the kind of clean, binary feedback that a scoreboard gives. You build layers, or they're built for you. Delegation, committees, consensus, carefully managed information. None of that is wrong. But over time, those layers can quietly remove you from any situation where the result is unambiguous. Where you can't spin it. Where the number just is.

In the sled, I couldn't hide. The clock didn't accept context. It didn't care that I was tired or that training had been disrupted or that the track was unfamiliar. It didn't care that my parents were scammed and all over international media nor did it care that my basement suite flooded with blackwater, both taking place within three weeks of racing. It just measured.

Ask yourself: when was the last time you were in front of something that measured you that cleanly?

And then ask the harder one: Am I earning, or am I maintaining?

There's a difference, and it's an important one. I work with executives and leaders who are grinding every single day. Genuinely, brutally busy. But busy isn't the same as building toward something. Night Train had a date on the calendar. February 27, 2010. Everything we did pointed at it. Every decision was measured against whether it moved us closer to that moment of truth or further from it.

Do you have a February 27th? A specific, identifiable moment where the work meets the scoreboard and you find out what it was all worth? Or has the ambiguity of "continuous improvement" replaced the clarity of "prepare for this"?

I'm not asking because I have it figured out. I'm asking because after I retired, I lost my February 27th for a long time — and the absence of it nearly destroyed me. Having something to aim at isn't a luxury. For people like us, it's oxygen.

· · ·

One more thing, and this one is for anyone who leads a team.

Think about the people in your sled. The ones who show up every day and push with everything they have. Are you creating the conditions where they get to feel what earning something feels like? Or have you, in the name of efficiency, speed, and process, smoothed out the very friction that would sharpen them?

Because there’s a version of protecting your team that actually robs them. It looks like leadership. It feels like support. But what it does is remove the resistance that would have built the thing you’re going to need from them when it matters most.

The best thing my coaches ever did was not make it easier. It was making sure the difficulty had a purpose.

· · ·

Standing trackside in Cortina this month, watching the next generation of athletes throw themselves down that ice at 90 mph, I was struck by how pure it still is. In a world full of noise, opinions, algorithms, and infinite shortcuts, the sliding track remains perfectly, ruthlessly honest.

You’re either fast enough, or you’re not. And both outcomes teach you something nothing else can. 

16 years later, I'm still grateful for every cold morning, every bruise, every run where I wasn't fast enough. They're the reason I was fast enough when it mattered most.

So don’t just nod at this and move on with your day. Actually sit with it for a second.

Where’s your clock? When is your February 27th? And are the people in your sled getting stronger because of you, or in spite of you?

Go earn something today that nobody can take from you.

- Steve

P.S. — Changes are coming to this newsletter. If you have 30 seconds, reply to this email and tell me: what's kept you reading?

P.P.S. — I also shared a version of this on Instagram. If it resonates, I'd appreciate you sharing it with someone who needs it. ⬇️