Rush for the Gold: Mystery at the Olympics

by John Feinstein

  “Unreal!” Gaines added. “She just beat her best time by five seconds! Five seconds! That’s impossible!”

  Stevie was on his feet, dancing around his room, screaming at least as loudly as Hicks and Gaines. “SHE DID IT! SHE DID IT!”

  His father popped open the door. He was already dressed for work at his law office downtown.

  “What happened?” he demanded.

  “Susan Carol WON, Dad, she won!” Stevie said.

  His dad broke into a wide smile. “She WON? Are you kidding me? She won? She beat the Chinese girl?”

  “Touched her out—two-hundredths of a second. Beat her own best time by five seconds.”

  His dad shook his head. “Wow,” he said.

  “Isn’t it amazing!?”

  “Incredible! You know … I think your girlfriend is about to become famous. I mean really famous, not like a couple years ago on TV.”

  Stevie hadn’t thought about that. He had been focused on Susan Carol’s stunning rise in the swimming world. He’d been writing about her success for the Washington Herald. In one story, he had quoted Bob Bowman, best known as Michael Phelps’s coach, as saying, “For a teenage girl to see a sudden drop in times isn’t that unusual. They can mature and get a lot stronger in a short period of time. This is another level, though. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite this dramatic.”

  Still … “She was a pretty big star when we were doing the TV show, Dad,” he said. “I remember what it was like that year at the Super Bowl.…”

  Bill Thomas was shaking his head. “Back then she had one little cable channel promoting her. Now she’ll have a bunch of big-time sponsors lining up.

  “Think about it, Stevie. The Olympics are coming, she’s a great story, and she’s a very pretty girl—as I think you’ve noticed.”

  His dad was right—Stevie knew it then and the next few months had proved it. Susan Carol sent him texts and emails updating him: Three Speedo guys at the house tonight. They want me in a commercial with Phelps.… And: Nike offering ridiculous money … Not to mention: Here’s my new cell and email. Had to change both. Agents won’t go away for five minutes. Same with my dad.

  So far, Don Anderson had turned them all away, not wanting his daughter to become a professional swimmer, which would mean—among other things—that she could no longer compete for her high school team or when she got to college. Of course, the money being offered would more than pay for Susan Carol’s college.…

  Stevie didn’t know what to think. But he’d started scheming ways to get to cover the Olympics in London. He had made enough money working as a freelancer for the Herald that he could pay his own way there if the newspaper would get him credentialed. Bobby Kelleher, his friend and mentor at the paper, was convinced Matt Rennie, the Herald’s sports editor, would go for it. “Getting an extra reporter there, someone good, without paying expenses?” he said. “Book your flights now.”

  That was back in March, when Stevie had spent most of his spring break covering the first and second rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament. It had been at the Final Four two years earlier that he and Susan Carol had met as winners of a writing contest. They had been skeptical about each other at the start. He was north; she was south. She loved Duke; he loved the Big Five; she was tall, he was … not. But they had discovered that they liked each other a lot when they stumbled onto a plot to throw the National Championship and had to work together.

  Now they were unofficially boyfriend and girlfriend. Unofficial because it was tough to see much of each other when boy lived in Philadelphia and girl lived in Goldsboro, North Carolina. They came together fairly often to cover big sporting events—he for the Herald, and she for the Washington Post. Technically that made them competitors, but somehow they always ended up working together on big stories.

  Stevie had been thinking the Olympics would mean spending three weeks in London covering the games with Susan Carol. But if Susan Carol was there as an athlete, he wasn’t likely to see much of her.

  And yet, how could he not be thrilled for her? He had known almost from their first meeting how important swimming was to her. He still remembered the first time he had actually seen her in the water. He had been awestruck then—and he still was.

  Stevie knew that part of the reason Susan Carol was being offered so much money wasn’t really about her ability as an athlete: It had to do with her looks. Apparently attractive teenage girls were a marketer’s dream. A little research had clarified things further. Jennifer Capriati, a tennis player who had been ranked in the top ten in the world at the age of fourteen, had been a multimillionaire the day she turned pro. Michelle Wie, a golfer who turned pro at sixteen, was also an instant millionaire. Figure skating was full of teenage wonders who sold everything from automobiles to watches.

  And teenage swimming phenoms were certainly nothing new. Amanda Beard had become a star at the Atlanta Olympics, where she carried a teddy bear with her to the blocks for good luck. By the time the next Olympics rolled around, she was a big-time model. Natalie Coughlin had won her first Olympic gold medal in Athens in 2004, and she’d also become a star. She had been hired by MSNBC as a Winter Olympics co-host in 2010 and had been on the ultimate look-at-me TV show, Dancing with the Stars.

  You didn’t have to be biased about Susan Carol to know she had the looks marketers would love. People always thought she was older than she actually was because she was tall. She was at least six feet (Stevie was convinced she was an inch taller but wouldn’t admit it). Stevie was still hoping to catch up with her, but at five-nine, he hadn’t gotten there yet. Kindly, she never wore heels when they were together.

  Susan Carol had long dark hair, a smile that could light up a dungeon (Stevie called it The Smile) and was—obviously—in great shape. She was smart and sharp and yet full of southern charm. Stevie was sure she could charm a Red Sox fan into rooting for the Yankees if she really put her mind to it.

  For a long time after they first began “dating,” Stevie had wondered what someone like Susan Carol saw in him. He guessed he was good-looking enough—although not in her class. But he was no athlete, though he loved sports and worked hard at it. He was maybe the fifth-best player on his basketball team—the junior varsity team. He was a reasonably good golfer but had never made the finals in the junior club championships.

  No, he had found his best success as a sports reporter. He knew and loved sports and had, as the old saying went, a nose for news. That much he and Susan Carol had in common. And working together brought out the best in both of them. They spurred each other on and could spend many hours talking sports. Plus, she seemed to think he was funny. “Never underestimate the importance of being funny,” his dad had once told him. “I never would have had a second date with your mother if she didn’t think I was funny.”

  Stevie and his father shared the same acerbic sense of humor. But Stevie had never been sure why that had impressed his mother. She was, without doubt, the serious one in the family.

  Still, for whatever unlikely combination of reasons, Susan Carol had chosen him. And Stevie had chosen her right back.

  Now, on a Friday afternoon in April, as he sat watching the second round of the Masters golf tournament, his mom came into the living room, holding out the telephone.

  Most of the time Stevie and Susan Carol communicated by video-chatting or texting when Stevie was at home, since his cell phone signal in the house stunk.

  “You aren’t online,” she said as soon as he said hello.

  “I’m downstairs watching the Masters,” he said. “Did you have your meeting with Lightning Fast?”

  “Just ended,” she said.

  “And?”

  “We signed.”

  She hardly sounded jubilant.

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “Good,” she said. “There’s a lot of guaranteed money involved, although not as much as they implied when they first approached us.”

  Stevie could tell
she was feeling stressed because her southern accent was in full gear—she was talking fast and the word implied came out implaahed.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “All the contracts have some up-front money and some guaranteed money—and it’s a lot; enough to pay for college, probably for all of us. But most of the money is keyed to how I do in the Olympics. Which means first I have to make the Olympic team, which is no lock. And then I have to win a medal, of course, and for the big money to kick in, I have to win a gold medal, and then, well …”

  “You’re rich.”

  There was a pause on the other end. “Pretty much,” she finally said.

  “What happens if you don’t make it to London?” he asked.

  “We still keep the up-front money, which is good, but then it pretty much becomes a trickle rather than a waterfall,” she said. “On the one hand, it’s more than I ever dreamed of, but on the other hand, I also dreamed of swimming in college.”

  “And you won’t be able to swim in college now because you’re a professional.”

  “Right. But not making this Olympics doesn’t mean my career is over. I’ll only be nineteen for the 2016 Games in Rio, and they say if I keep swimming well, they can renegotiate my deals then.”

  “Lot of ifs in there,” Stevie said, then felt bad because he was probably making her feel worse.

  “I know,” she said. “In the end, Dad and I decided the guaranteed money was enough to make the ifs worth it. I hope we were right.”

  “I’m sure you were,” he said, trying to be more positive. “For one thing, you’re going to make the team and you’re going to swim well in London. Look at how much you’ve improved in the last year. And you’re still improving. The timing for London is perfect.”

  “I know,” she answered. “That’s what Ed said too. He thinks I can improve more because I can train harder now that I’m older. But you know how the trials are. You have to finish first or second to make the team. And it’s the 200 fly—if you miscalculate your swim at all …”

  “You’ll be fine,” he said. “Plus, you’re ranked third in the country in the 100 fly, so you have a chance there too.”

  She sighed. “Stevie, honestly, I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  That made him smile. “Well, Scarlett,” he said, using the nickname he had put on her the first time he’d seen her turn on her southern charm, “the good news is, you don’t have to do without me. I’m right here whenever you need me.”

  “Thank you,” she said quietly. Then, “Who’s leading the Masters?”

  “Someone you like,” Stevie said.

  “Rickie Fowler?”

  “Yup.”

  “He is so cute.”

  “What’s that, Scarlett? The line’s breaking up.… I can’t hear you.”

  They were both laughing by the time they hung up the phone. Stevie felt better. He hoped Susan Carol did too.

  3: RETURN TO CHARLOTTE

  In May, Susan Carol returned to Charlotte—to the meet that had first put her on the swimming map a year earlier.

  A lot had happened since she had signed the contract with Lightning Fast. During her spring break, she and her father had flown to New York for a day of “appearances.” She had started her morning on the Today show (since NBC had the Olympic TV rights, the network was happy to promote a potential swimming star), where she stood outside in a steady drizzle while Ann Curry gushed about how cute her dress was and how she wished she could learn to swim butterfly. Susan Carol, who had done enough TV in the past to know how the game was played, offered to give her lessons.

  The most surprising part of her morning was discovering how short Matt Lauer was. Even in flat shoes, Susan Carol was several inches taller than the co-host.

  From there, they went upstairs to the Carousel Room in 30 Rockefeller Plaza for breakfast and a press conference—where Speedo announced that Susan Carol would join Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, and Natalie Coughlin as their main spokespeople leading up to the Games in London. Speedo and Lightning Fast had proposed that Susan Carol walk into the press conference in a Speedo bathing suit, but her father had nixed that idea. When J. P. Scott tried to argue for a moment, her father fixed him with a look.

  “You and I had an agreement, J.P.,” he said firmly. “We’re promoting her as an athlete.”

  Scott backpedaled quickly after that, and a Speedo sweat suit was agreed on as the outfit for the press conference.

  The only question from the media that made Susan Carol a little uncomfortable was one she had been prepped for.

  “How do you feel about being part of such a major marketing campaign when you’ve never even been on an Olympic team?”

  “Lucky,” she said, flashing The Smile. “And as I recall, Michael Phelps hadn’t won an Olympic medal when he signed with Speedo before the 2004 Olympics.”

  “But he was a world-record holder.”

  “Yes. And I’m a world champion.”

  That seemed to take care of that. The rest of the day was photo shoots, another press conference to announce deals with New Balance, Nikon, and Neutrogena—the three Ns, J. P. Scott called them. What wasn’t announced was that all of Susan Carol’s deals would be worth about $1 million total if she didn’t win an Olympic medal. A medal—silver or bronze—would double that. A gold medal would up their value closer to $20 million.

  Just the thought of it staggered Susan Carol. She couldn’t begin to think of how to spend that much money. The guaranteed $1 million was more fathomable—college for her and her siblings would put a big dent in that. And the security of it comforted her because she was having a hard time accepting that she would never be a college swimmer. All the things she’d imagined for her life were suddenly changing—it was hard to keep up.

  One thing was clear from the long New York day, though. She would earn every penny. Being a show pony for corporations was hard work.

  Even her life at school had changed. Suddenly everyone wanted to be her new best friend. Some teachers wanted her autograph for their children. Fortunately, her dad and Ed Brennan kept her in line. Especially Ed, since he had her in the pool for four hours a day, not to mention another hour in the weight room three days a week.

  Their approach to the Charlotte meet was entirely different this year. Last year, it had been a full taper meet, meaning she cut back on her yardage and changed her workouts a solid three weeks before the meet so she would be as fresh and strong as possible when she stepped on the blocks. This time, with the Olympic trials only seven weeks away, she would swim through the meet—meaning she wouldn’t slacken her workouts at all. She would begin her taper two weeks before the trials, which began June 25 in Omaha, Nebraska. Then, if she made the team, there was only a four-week break before the Olympics began.

  Even though Charlotte was now just a warm-up meet, it was going to be a zoo. Michael Phelps had decided to make it his last warm-up meet before the trials, along with several other past Olympians. Phelps’s presence alone would create a media circus. But Susan Carol, especially in her home state, had become a pretty big deal in her own right.

  After consulting with the Lightning Fast people and Ed Brennan, it was decided that Susan Carol would drive to Charlotte early Thursday morning, even though the meet didn’t start until Friday. She would work out in the pool that morning and hold a press conference right afterward. Everything seemed set, but then Susie McArthur, who was taking care of all her interviews, called a few nights before the meet.

  “We’re going to have to change your schedule,” she said. “Phelps wants to hold a press conference on Thursday too so he doesn’t have people bugging him before he swims on Friday.”

  “So, what’s the problem?” Susan Carol asked. “I’m supposed to talk at two o’clock, right? If we have to move it up an hour or back an hour, that’s no big deal.”

  “You don’t understand,” Susie said. “You have to move it up a day. You have to do it Wednesday.”

&n
bsp; “Wednesday? Why? I’m already missing two days of school. No way my dad and mom will agree to three days.”

  “I’ll talk to your parents. But we need to do this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if we have a press conference the same day as Phelps, you’re the second story, not the first. As popular as you are, Susan Carol, we’re talking Michael Phelps. We can’t compete with the greatest swimmer ever for publicity.”

  Well, that was certainly true. Still …

  “You’re going to have to talk to my dad about me missing another day of school,” she said.

  She heard Susie sigh on the other end of the phone. “I will. But last I looked, you’re making straight A’s. And you aren’t being paid to go to school.”

  Susan Carol wasn’t thrilled with her tone, but she let it go. Not long after that, her dad walked in to say he had talked to Susie. “I told her we’d do it,” he said. “J.P. and Susie will drive you down on Wednesday, Ed will be there Thursday, and I’ll join you Friday. And I want you to ask your teachers to give you your assignments for the rest of the week before you leave.”

  In truth, Susan Carol’s teachers had always been accommodating about letting her miss some class time when she was covering major sporting events since she was such a good student. But somehow this felt different to her.

  “Dad, is this going to get out of hand?”

  “Not if I can help it,” he said, which was about the least confident answer she’d ever heard from him. He walked out. She picked up Of Mice and Men and resumed reading. She had a lot of studying to do.

  Stevie was also missing school the week of the Charlotte meet—but just one day, and even that hadn’t been easy. As usual, his mom was concerned about him getting behind, and his English teacher, Ms. Granato, had called to say that Stevie was in danger of getting a C for second semester and that certainly wouldn’t help him get into college. As usual, his dad argued that his experiences as a reporter were just as important as an A in English. And so he was going.