by Mary Pilon
Four months later, the director of drug control administration for the United States Olympic team wrote back to say that the “consensus opinion” was that a “waiver could not be granted138 for such treatment with this banned substance.” Dismayed, Kevin appealed to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne, Switzerland. Famously opaque, the organization was then controlled by President Juan Antonio Samaranch, who since 1988 continues a multi-generational culture of corruption and secrecy in international sports. During his reign, the financial fortunes of the Games had ballooned, and Samaranch insisted on traveling via limousine, lodging at luxury hotels, and being addressed as His Excellency. Clear and logical governance, particularly concerning anti-doping matters, was not one of the group’s priorities.
Backing Kevin’s case was the United States Sailing Association, the governing body for the sport in the United States, and the American Civil Liberties Union, which had agreed to legally represent him. As part of the process, the medical records of Kevin’s cancer history, including the opinions and diagnoses of various doctors, were made public, but the details of his bipolar disorder were not discussed, nor known to the IOC.
Kevin’s conflict was a classic David-versus-Goliath tale, and the press was eager to cover the battle of a single person up against one of sport’s most complex, corrupt, and intimidating institutions. Kevin told reporters about how his Olympic quest had put him more than $25,000 in debt—the cost of his training, equipment, and nutritional requirements climbing way up over his highest budget estimates.139 There was also a certain irony in drug testing officials being so concerned with Kevin’s testosterone shots when many athletes in other sports were quite conspicuously using performance-enhancing drugs and easily evading what little drug testing existed140 at the time.
For years, people had been telling Kevin that he was crazy for thinking he was on The Show, a person of interest to the mass media. But by the winter of 1995, Kevin’s war with the IOC141 was being chronicled by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Good Morning America, among others, with many journalists putting actual cameras and recorders in front of him.142 What’s more, his persona in the news was as a cause-driven, American hero, one out to change the world for the better, akin to what he experienced in The Show. In the Times national section on February 15, 1996, his case garnered even more print real estate than President Bill Clinton’s trip to the Pacific Northwest to assess recent flood damage. “Many in the field consider Mr. Hall to be the best American hope for a medal in the Laser class,” the Times wrote. “That hope now appears to be on the verge of collapse.”143
It had been three years since the removal of Kevin’s second testicle, and yet he was forced to relive it all, on a public stage, no less. This wasn’t how he had pictured his Olympic dream.
“If the Olympics is not for Kevin Hall, then who is it for?” Mark Rosenbaum, Kevin’s ACLU attorney, told the Times. “He is the embodiment of the Olympic credo. Instead of keeping him from the starting line, they ought to have him carrying the Olympic torch.”
Reports emerged that the IOC was reconsidering its stance and was likely to approve Kevin’s right to compete at the Olympics and the U.S. trials. Yet the rumors remained just that—rumors. By mid-April, less than a month before the trials for the Laser class in Savannah, Georgia, were scheduled to begin, Kevin was tirelessly training every day, but still didn’t know where things stood. The IOC had said that it wanted to gather more blood samples to measure his testosterone levels.
Finally, at the last minute, Kevin was cleared for the U.S. trials, but not yet the Olympics. Now all he had to do was beat forty-seven other boats to earn his spot.
AMANDA
When Amanda had accepted a summer job to lead mountain bike tours in Europe, she had thought that it would be the perfect escape from the pressures of medical school, from the heartbreak of no longer being with Kevin. All she wanted to do was forget about him.
It didn’t work. The news of Kevin’s battle with the IOC was plastered all over newspapers, particularly in Olympics-hungry Europe. She read that he was sailing the best he ever had and was a contender for the 1996 Atlanta Games. She even saw him on television, which felt very bizarre because of what he had told her about The Show and their experience together in Boston. In real life, as the cameras rolled, Kevin was on his way to achieving his Olympic dream.
Part of her was happy for him, knowing how much achievement in the sport meant to him. But as she watched the media storm, the strangeness of a real-life Kevin Show manifesting, she couldn’t help but think that it should have been her, not Anne, at Kevin’s side.
KEVIN
Kevin headed into the Atlanta Olympic trials as the man to beat in the Laser class. But unlike the other sailors in Savannah, Georgia, Kevin hadn’t spent a season sailing on the international circuit. It was difficult to know whether that would make him fresh and rested at the trials or naive and devoid of experience.
Dozens of boats had gathered at the brand-new Savannah sailing center, a gleaming addition to a Southern city144 already heavy on charm and buttery cuisine. The Olympic torch would soon make its way through town, en route to Atlanta 250 miles away, where most of the Games would be held, but the sailing events were to be staged at Savannah. Those hoping to watch the races, including Kevin’s parents and Anne, boarded viewing boats that positioned them closer to the courses, far from shore. “I’m in much better shape than most of these guys,” he told reporters. “I enjoy the gym. My wife is a personal trainer,145 so it works out for us.”
However, Kevin’s first four races that weekend “were not pretty,”146 the Washington Post reported. Perceived as one of the top Laser sailors going into the competition, by the end of Sunday he was not near the front of the pack, thirteenth of forty-eight boats. The following Monday, with moderate to strong breezes, he made a second- and a third-place finish. That brought him to fourth place in the standings, with ten races to go. Kevin told reporters that he wasn’t worried, that he was trying to be patient. If the conditions continued to be strong and rough, it could work to his advantage, as those were the elements in which he thrived. But he was missing his downwind rhythm and he knew it. Although his mind was fully in the present and the Director seemed at rest, his sailing was having a full breakdown. At one point, his boat even capsized.
At age twenty-six, Kevin wondered if he was already sailing like a has-been. He could understand that the 1992 trials may have been too soon for him, but this Olympic cycle was supposed to be his. Most of his competitors appeared sympathetic to his struggle with testicular cancer and the still unresolved matter with the IOC, but some didn’t hesitate to take swings. “Kevin is definitely disadvantaged because of his illness,” said Andy Lovell, a sailor who had sailed past Kevin to take the lead on Monday of the trials. “He used to be faster downwind, but not anymore.”
The trials became hard to watch as Kevin lost control on and off the water. One of his Brown teammates found him curled up in a ball on his boat, “unable to keep his mind together.”147
Ultimately, Kevin finished in fifth place, not earning a berth for the American team competing in Atlanta.
The testosterone controversy with the IOC was moot.
•
After the Olympics bust, Kevin went back to work crewing, including a stint sailing skiffs in Australia with Morgan Larson, an old friend and sailing partner from his days on the junior circuit.148 He also went back to his marriage with Anne, still somewhat feeling as if he was on suburban autopilot. Sailing: check. House in California: check. Marriage: check.
Years later, the author Olivia Laing would write about the gentrification of emotions149 underway in much of Western culture. “Amidst the glossiness of late capitalism,” Laing said, “We are fed the notion that all difficult feelings—depression, anxiety, loneliness, rage—are simply a consequence of an unsettled chemistry, a problem to be fixed rather than a response to structural injustice or, on the other hand, to the n
ative texture of embodiment, of doing time, as David Wojnarowicz put it, in a rented body, with all the attendant grief and frustration that entails.”
Kevin’s rented body had had cancer, twice. But his body was also his means for achieving professional success, his identity, part of what he considered to be his personal fabric. In his marriage and life, just like everyone else, he had to hold it all together.150 Kevin just wondered why his fight to do so felt so difficult.
From time to time, Amanda appeared in his mind, especially when he was asked to do some coaching work at a sailing event in New York. He wondered what she was doing, how she was faring in medical school, whether she was seeing anyone. He had heard the occasional nugget of news from their shared friends over the years, but he and she hadn’t spoken much or exchanged many letters since he’d told her about his marriage to Anne. Kevin didn’t feel any anger toward Amanda and still considered himself her friend. He still cared about her and couldn’t help but wonder if she felt the same way about him, too. He shook his head. It didn’t matter. They had both moved on.
On a whim one day while he was in New York, he gave Amanda a call. He didn’t have much spare time while he was in the city, he said, but maybe they could grab a drink somewhere near the airport, just to catch up.
Kevin felt a thrill when he heard her answer. She told him that she was back in town and would love to see him.
AMANDA
Many of Kevin’s episodes, including the near-death car chase in Boston, had happened in or around transit hubs, and as Amanda made her way to LaGuardia Airport to see him, she was starting to see why: there was an inherent manic energy to them, as people were constantly in motion, as if rushing to shake off versions of themselves. Travel, by nature, inspires personality changes, with some travelers returning home with tchotchkes, some with new thoughts, and some with a new wrapper, having shed the old skin151 behind somewhere. They’re places of infinite possibilities: flights to Bombay, Buffalo, or Baghdad, each gate representing an entrance into another experience, or life. (His R.E.M. fandom also brought to mind the song “Airportman,” in which great “opportunity” blinks.)
Yet LaGuardia Airport in New York City is a place where charm dare not tread. Originally dedicated in 1939, with little updating since, it is consistently ranked as one of the worst airports in the country, likened by several dignitaries to a product of the Third World rather than an entry into one of the globe’s wealthiest cities. Pilots landing there jokingly dub it the USS LaGuardia, as it is surrounded by water and so resembles an aircraft carrier. Similarly, it has the dingy lighting of a warehouse, the odors of a locker room, along with the neon-accented signage of the 1970s and fragile, cardboard-like walls that burst at the seams with grumbling travelers. Like much of New York City, LaGuardia seemed to be in a constant state of construction, but unlike the rest of New York City, it didn’t seem to show any signs of improvement.
Three years had passed since Amanda and Kevin had broken up, and since their parting, she had had no problem finding boyfriends, her current one being a nice man named David, but they all, in spite of their merits, seemed to exist in her eyes as shadows of Kevin.
As Kevin approached her at the airport, he looked the same as she remembered him and how he had looked on television, tan, athletic, smiling. They sat at one of LaGuardia’s questionable bars, ordered beers, and began chatting, the chaos of the airport bustling around them on all sides.
In an effort intended to be polite more than nosy, Amanda asked Kevin how Anne, his wife, was doing. The two had never met, but it just seemed like a nice thing to ask.
“She’s not you,” Kevin said.
The air left her body. What could he possibly have meant? Was he joking?
He went on to say that he had married the wrong woman. He had been wrong all along. He had been in love with Amanda the whole time. He wanted to get a divorce and spend the rest of his life with her.
They exchanged a kiss. Amanda’s knees collapsed.
KEVIN
It seemed incredible to Kevin that Amanda, the woman he loved, didn’t care about his sailing results, his mental illness, or the fact that he couldn’t provide her with biological children. She loved him. It was finally time for the two of them to start the rest of their lives together, even if he had dumped her. They exchanged powerful letters saying as much, and agreed that Kevin needed to sort things out with Anne on his own.
Even as Kevin rejoiced in being reunited with Amanda, sadness loomed, a miasma that seemed to creep into his mind as effortlessly as it left, often with no reason. While some people take comfort in chronicling the things that they’re grateful for, Kevin sat down to his journal and made a list of his failures, sorted by the year in which they occurred. He had failed at his relationship, failed to make an Olympic team, and failed to pursue a “real” career outside of sailing, and that was just for a start.
’89 my mind fails me152—hospital, medication, no answers just pain.
’90 my body, indeed half my hormone factory, not only fails but threatens to corrupt the rest of me.
SO WHAT, I CAN DO IT, ETC .—2nd at Singlehandeds and feel like a failure.
’91 my mind fails me again, just as I am completing my thesis and preparing to return healthy and accomplished to California.
’92 my mind fails again, fail to coach Julia, make a fool of myself in front of the US Sailing Team, white face, “Amour” hallucination.
’92 my body fails me—we think it’s in the blood. Abdomen open, no trip to the Worlds, etc.
’93 just when I thought I could begin trying to recover again, I lose the other testicle.
’93 my mind can’t deal and revolts, searching for meaning and fails again [Boston Harbor, trying to get to Bermuda]
’93 again, even with all the medication, but this time I feel my friends are failing me too. [I have pushed them away/made it impossible for them to stay.] My world is collapsing.
’94 removed from all of it, I am essentially carefree & at peace. My responsibilities are few and easily managed, but I can’t “afford” it.
’94 just to make sure I had to think of it again, a new prosthesis, still the wrong size, is put in.
’94 even Amanda gives up on me
’94 flee the country, fail even to get a stupid job scrubbing rich peoples boats [“overqualified”!]
’94/5 fail to get accepted to law school153
’95/6 fail to resolve IOC issue
’96 fail to win Trials
’96/7 fail to do something with my life, be a great and amazing doctor, lawyer, businessman, whatever
’97 fail to grab the mainsheet out of the gybe in the Finals …
The list went on and on.
Kevin also made a list of his accomplishments—his junior sailing title, early admission to Brown, finishing school and nearly winning a national title after being diagnosed with cancer—and wondered why he couldn’t celebrate those things. He had two lists, wins and losses, but the dark list screamed louder. In fact, he couldn’t shut the failure up.
Kevin thought about his first couple of years at Brown before The Show, and while they seemed simple in a way, he also couldn’t help but wonder if he had been overly arrogant. “My world was about ‘Accomplishment,’ about ‘goals,’ ”154 he wrote. “About jumping through the hoops to please dad, to validate myself. I could hang out with adults—‘so mature,’ I could hang out with girls—‘so nice, sensitive’—but I couldn’t hang out with peers. Even blamed it on them!”
Unbeknownst to many of those who knew him best, Kevin was in a spiral, this time heading down.
KRISTINA
A Long Beach Dub Allstars ska show near Ventura seemed like as good a reason as any for Kristina to visit her brother. And it was nice to have something other than his mania bringing them together.155
The two siblings went for a drive and then parked outside their mother’s home where they had grown up, a spot that had changed surprisingly little since they
were kids. Kevin had something he wanted to talk to Kristina about. He told her that he was still in love with Amanda. He wanted a divorce from Anne and he needed Kristina’s help.
The news of the split with Anne surprised Kristina just as much as the news of his marriage to her had in the first place. When Kevin had called her back then to let her know about his engagement, she hadn’t even known that he had a girlfriend. The idea of a divorce was unsettling, but she could see why Kevin wouldn’t want to stay in a marriage that he felt was wrong, a marriage that made him miserable.
Kristina went back to Bend, Oregon, the small ski town where she was living at the time. But she knew that she should move to Santa Barbara, about forty minutes from Ventura, to be near her brother while he was going through his divorce yet far enough away to have her own space. He would need her to talk to, to be with, to help through the difficult process. Once again, this was not the time for her to be focused primarily on her own career or her own relationship status. Her parents needed her to be there for Kevin. Kevin needed her to be there for Kevin. And Kristina needed to be there for Kevin, a kind of sibling support he thanked her for and didn’t take for granted.
KEVIN
Not long after the Olympic trials in Atlanta, Kevin began planning his bid for the 2000 Sydney Games. Maybe this time, he thought, instead of sailing in the Laser, he could pair up and go for the 49er, where his likelihood of making the team could be greater.
Due to make its Olympic debut in Sydney, the 49er was like a two-person cousin to the Laser. A lighter, faster dinghy that was remarkably small, it was named for its hull length, 4.99 meters. Foils, which place the boat just over the water, almost like a seaplane, helped the 49er carry large loads but also turn and twist quickly with both people on board having the ability to control their boat’s power. The 49er had quickly captured the imagination156 of sailors, some of them dubbing it the Batmobile.