Relentless Spirit

by Missy Franklin

  At states, relays count twice as much as individual events, which I thought was awesome. It reinforced for me why I’d always thought of swimming as a team sport, and here it came down to the final 4x100 free relay event. The way the math worked out, whichever team came out in front, Regis or Cherry Creek, would be state champs. Neither one of us had to win the relay, necessarily; we just had to beat the other team.

  The state meet always had this tremendous energy attached to it. There was a ton of excitement. Each section of the stands was oozing school spirit. People drove clear across the state to be there, got dressed up in their school colors, cheered their lungs out, and really got into it.

  Creek’s strategy was to lead off with their fastest swimmer, and to put their second-fastest in the anchor spot. And for a while, it looked like the strategy was working, because they were ahead after the second leg. On the third leg, we started to close the gap. I was swimming the anchor for Regis, because Nick Frasersmith had a different strategy. He wanted his fastest swimmer to anchor, so it fell to me to close the gap and find a way to win.

  Here’s how we lined up, for those of you Colorado high school swimming fans keeping score at home:

  For Regis, it was Hillary Thomas, Alex Todd, McKenna DeBever, and me.

  For Creek, it was Bonnie Brandon, McKenna Newsum-Schoenberg, Fiona Kane, and Jordan Mattern.

  I’ll let you in on a little secret: in this type of spot, I always preferred being the predator—meaning, the one who had to come from behind. When you’re the predator, you can see the swimmers in front of you and take their measure. When you’re the predator, you know exactly what you have to do before you give chase. When you’re the prey, you don’t always have a good idea where you are in the water, relative to the swimmers coming up behind you. You know how big a lead you might have had when you dove in, but that’s about it. After that, you’re kind of flying blind.

  When you think about it, it’s the same role I played when I chased my father down the mountain that day at Winter Park.

  Anyway, this whole predator-prey dynamic is one of my favorite things about our sport, the way you can be trailing when you start your swim and reel in your opponent and turn the relay around. Or the way you can be out in front without having any clear idea who’s coming up behind you. I was always so amped up, swimming that last leg, that the danger was potentially overswimming the first twenty-five out of sheer excitement and not leaving myself enough energy to finish the final seventy-five. When you race individually, you all start at the same time, and your race management is entirely different, but when you’re coming from behind on a relay, it’s a different strategy and mind-set.

  Luckily, happily, mercifully, I’d had a lot of experience in this kind of spot, so I didn’t tank on my first twenty-five. I just kept building to a big finish, taking a bite out of the lead at each turn. (Sorry, guys, but I’m sticking with that predator metaphor.)

  It just so happened that the “prey” in this case was one of my closest friends, Jordan Mattern. We were on the same club team and had been on many relays together over the years, so I knew what she was capable of, and that I needed to be at my best in order to touch the wall ahead of her.

  Meanwhile, I could see with every breath that my teammates were going completely wild on the pool deck. I could hear the roar of the crowd, and I could make out our Regis section, getting louder and louder as I got closer and closer.

  I did my job, in the end. I picked out that Creek cap in the pool and put it behind me, and we were state champions!

  Regis: 3:22.42.

  Creek: 3:24.39.

  And Jordan Mattern did exactly what she needed to do by swimming the fastest leg for her team, so she put up an amazing fight at the end—but I was able to tap into the relentless spirit that had by now become a part of me, and to answer with an amazing fight of my own.

  For the record, our time in the 4x100 free set a state record that still stands, with both times besting the previous record of 3:24.85, set by Creek the year before.

  Let me tell you, I don’t think I’ve ever been so emotional at a meet. There were instant tears, all around. It was my first time experiencing a thrill of this magnitude, and even though I’d go on to experience other great thrills—at the Olympic trials, at the NCAAs, at the Olympics—there’s nothing like that first adrenaline rush of joy that finds you when your dreams come true in the pool. I was just hysterically sobbing—me and all the other girls on the team. It was overwhelming, really, and one of the reasons we were all so emotional was that Regis had never won a class 5A state title. So that was huge for us. Another reason was that the girls on that team meant so much to me. We all meant so much to each other. (Bring on the sap!) And for a lot of them, this would be the very pinnacle of their swimming careers. So that was something, too.

  What an honor it was, to be able to join my friends on that pinnacle, and to help them get there by swimming that anchor leg.

  What a blessing it was, to be a part of a team that was able to bring Regis Jesuit its first state title at this level.

  And what a challenge it would now be, to find a way to keep that spirit of teamwork alive in my swimming. That was the great takeaway for me, that I was wired for this type of thing. Up until this championship, I hadn’t really formulated my plans for swimming in college. Oh, I’d definitely be going to college, but a lot of top swimmers choose to focus on their international swimming careers, where they can compete and train long course all year round.

  But not me, I decided—right then and there, by the side of that pool. Swimming was a team sport, after all. I’d never trade this moment, and I’d set myself up to have more moments just like it.

  FIVE

  LONDON

  So here we are, about halfway through the book, and it feels like the right time to break from format. I’ve done most of the “talking” to this point—which, if you know me, isn’t all that surprising. But as we’re gathering our thoughts, and looking at the defining moments of the 2012 Summer Olympics, it feels like a lot of those stories have already been told—at least, a lot of my stories have already been told.

  As readers might remember, I did a ton of media interviews leading up to the games and during our time in London, and the attention only increased when we got back home. That’s what happens, I guess, when you come home with all that hardware: a bronze medal I’d picked up on the first day of competition as part of the 4x100-meter freestyle relay, and four gold medals (in the 100- and 200-meter backstroke, and as a member of the 4x200-meter freestyle and 4x100-meter medley teams). I swam in seven events in all, so it felt to me like I was competing, warming up, warming down, or being interviewed the entire time I was in London, and for another six months after I got back to the States.

  It was such a crazy, thrilling time in my life, and in the life of my family, but there are only so many ways I can share and reshare the same stories, so what we’ve decided to do here is turn the cameras on my parents. Oh, they did a ton of interviews, too, but for the most part reporters wanted them to talk about me. Nobody really asked them what the whole Olympic experience was like from their perspective, so we figure the thing to do is hand the controls to them over these next pages and let them tell it like it was . . . for them. You’ll hear from me a bit later on, with one of my favorite London stories, but for now I’ll leave it to Mom and Dad to tell the tale.

  Sound like a plan?

  DAD: Jeez, Miss . . . I thought you’d never give up the floor! But that’s right, our London experiences were a whole lot different than any of the athletes’. And, certainly, a whole lot different than Missy’s experiences. I think we all started to realize how our lives were about to change in Omaha, at Olympic trials. What a thrilling moment for our family! We’d been to Omaha before, of course, in 2008, but the stakes were different then. Missy was just so happy to be there. I told people that making it to this lev
el was achievement enough, and I sincerely believed that at the time. I still do. If that’s all it ever was for Missy, D.A. and I would have been so enormously proud of her, and it would have been something she could have held on to and looked back on for the rest of her life. I said the same thing this time around, too, in 2012, only now there were certain expectations. Now Missy had pushed her way into the conversation. People were talking about her as one of the best in the world in her events, so even though I was saying all the same things, and believing all the same things, there was a part of me crossing my fingers and holding my breath and hoping Missy could swim her way onto the Olympic team. The meet started on a Monday, and Missy swam a grueling schedule. It’s always one of the toughest meets in the world. Eight long days, filled with a roller coaster of emotions. Only the top two finishers in each event make the team, so there was very little margin for error.

  Missy had her work cut out for her, but D.A. and I were in a better spot than a lot of the other parents in the stands. Most of them had athletes swimming in just one or two events, so for those families the tension was really high. It worked out that Missy had one of her strongest events on the second day—the 100-meter backstroke. She had her preliminary heat in the morning, and the semifinal that night, and then she came back for the finals the following night, so pretty much right out of the gate we knew she was going to London. We were just so terribly excited for her, so wonderfully excited, and we still had the rest of the meet ahead of us, and Missy could still qualify in the 200 back, in the 100 and 200 free, in the relay events. It was all wide-open, all right there for the taking, but now the pressure was off. And here I don’t mean the pressure on Missy so much as I mean the pressure on us! She was great about the pressure, just kind of shrugged it off, but for her mother and me, it was agonizing. I looked in the stands, and all around were these parents whose athlete maybe wasn’t scheduled to swim until the end of the week. They were on pins and needles that whole time, waiting to see if they were going to London. Or maybe their one event came early on in the schedule, and they were disappointed on the very first day. And there were quite a few of Missy’s friends in Omaha that year who ended up just missing out, and we were friendly with all the parents, we knew all the swimmers, so there was a lot of tension and disappointment. Like I said, it’s just a roller coaster of emotions for these families, as it was for us as well, but for us at least the thrill ride worked, in a good way, right away.

  Naturally, we tried to keep a lid on our celebrating around the pool, because we knew so many others would leave the meet without a spot on the team. We were able to race up to Missy’s hotel room afterward and decorate it with red, white, and blue ribbons, and help Missy celebrate that she was now an Olympian. Whatever happened from here on in, nobody could take that away from her. The third night of trials, and already she was an Olympian, and I remember feeling some of those same emotions when she made it to trials four years earlier. That this was enough. Something to look back on. Something to cherish. Always. If this was as far as swimming would take her, this was enough. This was something. This was everything.

  MOM: What a lot of people don’t really think about is that these games were like a rite of passage for us. Remember, Missy was our only child. She came into our lives like a little miracle, and here she was, seventeen years old, getting ready to head off to college in just a year. It was a bittersweet time. It’s like our time with her was coming to an end, and in a lot of ways the Olympics were symbolic of that. For me, anyway. One night, about a month before we left for London, I found myself feeling a little wistful, a little reflective, and I sat down and wrote a long e-mail to Karen Crouse of the New York Times. Karen had covered swimming for years and years, and she’d become a family friend, she was close with Missy, and I knew if there was anyone who could understand the tug and pull I was feeling about these special moments in Missy’s life, it was her.

  Here’s what I wrote:

  “My daughter is seventeen, still a minor, a teenager, and still a child in many ways. My daughter is an Olympian. . . . No, I don’t think it’s really hit me yet. I watch the Comcast Olympic trials replays over and over again, wondering how I missed so much! I smile, and tears roll down my cheeks as I hear her called an Olympian. Yes, my little girl. I think about all those meets. I smile as I think of my OCD routines . . . clean towels, three pairs of goggles in her bag, two caps, and then the snacks and drinks . . . always, too much! As she started qualifying for the ‘big’ meets, like zones, sectionals, junior nationals, nationals, Olympic trials, my routine changed somewhat. Although she packed her own suitcase, I couldn’t let go of that swim bag that she carried onto the plane with her. Now there were always NEW towels and NEW goggles in her bag. Although I made her adjust the goggles so that they were perfect when she needed them, I left the sticker protectors on the eye pieces to protect them and allow her to see which ones were still unmarked and fresh for her.

  “Two weeks ago she left on another travel meet, this time to join the Olympic team. I got out the washed new towels, three pairs of her ever-familiar Speedo Women’s Vanquisher goggles, pulled them out of their packages and had her try on each pair and cut the straps . . . not too short, as I didn’t want them to slip on her. She stopped her reading and patiently performed this task without complaint. She had done it so many times and knew this is what ‘I did.’ This is how I was ‘part’ of her swimming. I added the new Speedo nose clips that she has used for the last two years. I also put one out for Coach Todd’s bag and put one in my carry-on that I would take to London in three weeks! I smiled thinking about what I would do with this nose clip if I noticed her panic on deck when she dropped hers to the bottom of the pool. Carefully, I arranged them all in her bag, the goggles and nose clips in one Baggie placed on top of the caps in the back pocket. One towel cushioned the bottom of her bag, and on top went her familiar snacks and water bottle. I made sure the Kleenex and Aleve were easily accessible in her side pocket. (She had a little cold.) Then I pulled out her wallet, a special one I found that had two compartments for bills. I put dollars in one and pounds in the other. I felt a little guilt . . . I had forgotten the euros (they were going to France first, for training camp). I put Pascal, her cowboy teddy bear, beside her bag. She would be upset if he didn’t make the trip with her.

  “I look out the window and see our neighborhood pool right across the street. That’s where it all started, not just for her but for all of us. I learned how to be a timer, a runner, a concession helper. I liked signing up for ribbons, which we could do the next day over a glass of wine, away from the kids. [We’d decorate ribbons with the swimmer’s name and time, usually for the top eight finishers in an event, along with some “participation” ribbons, which we’d then present to the swimmers at a later date.] How many times did I worry she would miss her event as she was having fun playing in the tent with her friends, her heat card quickly stuffed down her wet suit . . . somewhere? How many times did I remind her to go to the bathroom before her event only to watch her wiggle on the blocks. I move on to the early club days on the Colorado Stars . . . all precious memories. I remembered her excitement when a meet was in Colorado Springs or Fort Collins, both an easy sixty- to ninety-minute commute. We’d make it a ‘travel meet,’ pack up the car, put our dog in the back, and head to the hotel. She loved getting in our room, unpacking and checking everything out. In the early days she traveled and stayed with us. I think we loved it so much because outside of the pool, we had nothing to do but cuddle together. . . .

  “Where have those days gone? My daughter is an Olympian. . . . I can’t wait to see my daughter, the Olympian. . . . We won’t have seen her for a month. She is a minor, so we will go to the Olympic Village on 8/5 and sign her out, then bring her home to our rental . . . and we will cuddle, just like we’d always do. After all, it is just another travel meet . . .”

  And then I signed off with a little smiley-face emoticon—:)—which really d
idn’t show how I was feeling at all. Happy, yes. But also a little sad. What’s the emoticon for that?

  DAD: It’s true, D.A. was a bit of a wreck after trials. I suppose I was, too, in my own way. And it’s not like these moments caught any of us by surprise. We’d been building toward them and building toward them since Missy was a little girl. In a lot of ways, we’d had London on our calendars since Missy’s first trip to Omaha, back in 2008, and now that it was upon us it was almost too big to be believed. Of the three of us, I have to say it was Missy who kept it together best of all. She was focused. She was determined. She knew what she had to do. There wasn’t really any time for hugs and tears and nostalgia. If anything, I think she felt bad for some of her friends who didn’t make the team, girls she’d been swimming with for years. But that’s one of the things that makes her such a great competitor, I think. She’s an emotional person, but she’s not an emotional athlete. She puts everything into her swims, all of her passion and purpose, but at the same time she takes a very clinical approach. She does what she has to do, and here she might have taken the time to cry a little for a good friend who might have fallen just short in Omaha, to celebrate a little with her mom and dad, but then it was back to work, so when she headed off for training camp and her final preparations before the games, it was very clear in her mind what she had to do. There was what she’d worked for, all along, and now it was close enough to touch.