With emerging technologies ushering in new industries while phasing out others, many of us are tackling challenges we didn’t envision when starting our careers. Fortunately we don’t have an audience watching as we stumble through the awkward learning phase.

Yao Bin wasn’t so lucky.

He was born in the People’s Republic of China in 1957 during the last gasps of Chairman Mao’s “Social Revolution”—which wiped out the class system—and a heartbeat before his “Great Leap Forward” plan to radically reform the nation’s economy. Yao’s birthplace was Harbin in Heilongjiang Province, a place of brutally cold winters nicknamed the “Ice City.”

Geographically, Harbin is almost nestled in the arms of Siberia and has always felt the influence of its Russian neighbors. Following their defeat in the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, Russia’s White Guard fled to Harbin, establishing the largest Russian community outside the mother country. Most were forced to leave during the post-WWII Soviet occupation, but during Yao’s boyhood, Harbin still bore the architectural and cultural influence of Russia … including, perhaps, that nation’s love for figure skating.

Just as Chairman Mao began his rigid communist crackdown, the Chinese people began gliding across the ice. Figure skating soon became a favorite sport in the Ice City—and for Yao. At 13, he was accepted onto Harbin’s team.

Venturing out

As Yao was quietly skating to adulthood, China was again going through political upheaval. Chairman Mao died, and despite efforts by one of his followers to continue his practices, in 1978 Deng Xiaoping seized power in a bloodless coup. Deng felt the great closed society should open up a bit more—which is how Yao suddenly found himself carrying the hopes of a nation.

The government decided the most promising skaters should begin representing the People’s Republic in international competition. It was an offer they couldn’t refuse. Yao was chosen to be half of the nation’s first pairs team. He was 21. His assigned partner, Luan Bo, was 12.

What an extraordinary opportunity … for worldwide humiliation.

Pairs skating is especially challenging because of the lifts, throws, and precision timing involved. Yao and Luan had no experienced coaches to guide them, and no film of other skaters to watch. Their only reference for learning the moves and choreographing their routines was a series of still photos.

Falling down

They debuted at the 1980 World Championships in West Germany, skating their meticulously practiced routine before a live audience in the arena and a worldwide broadcast audience of millions.

Everyone laughed. The live audience actually laughed aloud at the team’s trips, stumbles, and all-around ineptitude. Yao and Luan finished dead last.

This humiliating spectacle was repeated at the World Championships in 1981 and 1982, and at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Yugoslavia. Each time, the couple placed … dead last.

Yao retired as a skater after the ’84 Olympics. But he wasn’t defeated by his public defeats. Instead, they fueled his passion to change the world’s perception of Chinese figure skaters. He joined the Harbin team as a coach, and three years later received his degree from Harbin Normal University Sports College. In 1998, he became director of China’s national figure skating committee.

Rising up

He returned to the scene of his first debacle—the World Championships hosted by West Germany—in 2004. But 24 years later, no one laughed at his efforts. His pairs teams finished second, third, and fifth.

It took another six years to frost the cake. At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Coach Yao’s teams topped the podium, taking both the Gold and Silver plus setting a world record for most points scored in the pairs short program. It was the first time in a half-century any nation had replaced Russia atop the Olympic medals stand in pairs competition. And it was the ultimate vindication for the once-humiliated skater from Harbin who wouldn’t let defeat end his dream.