Hal vs. Stice, Steeply and Poutrincourt in the crowd — "For then you awaken to the…"
For then you awaken to the fact that you are loved for winning only. The two and three wins created you, for people. It is not that the wins made them recognize something that existed unrecognized before these upset wins. The from-noplace winning created you. You must keep winning to keep the existence of love and endorsements and the shiny magazines wanting your profile.
Context
This is the psychology of being-watched at its most airless. The étoile discovers that the adoring gaze didn't recognize a self that was already there — "the from-noplace winning created you," the attention manufactured the person, and so the person only exists as long as the winning continues to feed it. It's spectation as ontology: you are what the crowd looks at, and when it stops looking you stop being. The line does to the celebrated what the theme elsewhere does to the viewer — locates the self entirely outside itself, in the screen or the stands, so that the human being is a function of the watching and evaporates the instant the watching turns away.