Rush for the Gold: Mystery at the Olympics

by John Feinstein

  Sjöström, totally gracious in defeat, put her hand on Susan Carol’s head and said, “Greatest race I have ever been in.”

  Elizabeth was crying. So was Susan Carol. If she had won gold instead of silver, she honestly wasn’t sure she could have been any happier.

  24: ONE IS SILVER

  Stevie wasn’t sure how to feel when he saw the times go up on the board. The finish had been so close, there was no way to tell from the stands who had finished first and who had finished fourth. From where they were sitting, it almost looked as if all four swimmers touched at the same time.

  Even so, he was a little bit surprised when he realized that Elizabeth Wentworth had won. She had looked like a non-factor for most of the race. At the fifty she had been half a body length behind Susan Carol and Sjöström and almost two behind Krylova.

  With twenty meters to go, it still looked like a three-woman race. Stevie hadn’t been paying any attention to Elizabeth until over the din he heard Kelleher say, “Here comes Wentworth!” Sure enough, she was closing in on the three leaders—Krylova fading with every stroke, Susan Carol and Sjöström matching strokes, and Wentworth suddenly looking faster than all of them.

  The sight of Susan Carol and Elizabeth hugging and crying on each other’s shoulders choked Stevie up. Wentworth had been going just that little bit faster at the finish to touch Susan Carol out. So ridiculously close! Even so, no matter what else happened, Susan Carol was going to come home with an Olympic silver medal. That was mind-boggling.

  He could see Susan Carol’s family in the stands going nuts—jumping up and down and waving flags.…

  He was jolted from his reverie by the sound of Kelleher’s voice. “Come on, we need to get downstairs. The game is really on now for the 200.”

  Oh, right. J. P. Scott didn’t have a gold medalist to pitch, and Brickley still needed a poster girl.

  Scrambling through the stands to get downstairs for the post-race interviews, Stevie saw Elizabeth and Susan Carol being interviewed together by NBC’s Andrea Kremer. Both wore bright-as-the-sun smiles as they talked. He wondered if Susan Carol had thought about what might be coming next.

  Probably not. That was the way a reporter would think. At this moment she wasn’t a reporter. She was an Olympic silver medalist. And he hoped she was soaking up every minute of it.

  Sarah Sjöström had agreed to go to the mixed zone to talk to reporters. Svetlana Krylova, the media was told, would not be there. The two Americans would come to the interview room together.

  “Look, I know you want to see Susan Carol and you will,” Kelleher said to Stevie once the announcements had been made on which swimmers were showing up where. “The medal ceremony is in thirty minutes, and we’ll see that for sure because it’s cool even if you’ve seen it a hundred times.”

  “Which you have.”

  “At least. Still gives me chills. I miss the old Soviet anthem, though.”

  “Whaa?”

  “The old Soviet anthem was the best I’ve ever heard. Better than ‘Le Marseillaise’ and better than ‘O Canada,’ which is saying a lot. Sorry, rambling. Right now I want you to take a walk around here and see what you can find out.”

  “Take a walk?”

  “Yes. Tamara is trying to find out if there’s any way to talk to Krylova. She’s got a friend who works for FINA who might be able to help. All our players are in this building somewhere right now—J.P. for sure; Bobby Mo almost for sure; hell, Phil Knight is here somewhere. Go find them. See who they’re talking to, what they’re doing. If there’s something going on here, they’ll all be refiguring their strategies given how this race turned out.”

  “But what am I supposed to ask; what would I do if I saw them?”

  Kelleher gave Stevie a look.

  “This your first rodeo? No. You’ve got the best reporting instincts I’ve seen in ages. Go use them.” He practically pushed Stevie out of the room. The hallway outside was teeming with people. Chockablock, he’d heard the British call it. The last event of the night, the women’s 400 freestyle, was in the water. Stevie knew that because there were TV screens on the walls everywhere, and he could see a 200 split time on the screen, meaning the women had just passed the halfway point of the race.

  He walked in the direction of the mixed zone, remembering from past experiences that agents and other hangers-on could get access to it, although there was no reason for anyone he might be looking for to be there. J.P. would no doubt be attached to Susan Carol, and Krylova might be out of the building by now, for all he knew.

  He turned a corner and almost bumped into Ed Brennan. If Ed was disappointed by Susan Carol’s near miss, he didn’t show it.

  “Can you believe that race?” he said, once he saw it was Stevie he’d almost collided with. “Four swimmers under the world record! My God, that was great. I still can’t believe Wentworth came from so far behind to win. She is so strong. I think she’ll be tough to beat in the 200.”

  He was talking so fast that Stevie was almost out of breath just listening. But that last comment got his attention.

  “You think she’s better than Susan Carol in the 200?”

  Ed shrugged. “Who knows? Susan Carol beat her in the trials. The 200 is about being in shape and swimming a smart race, but sometimes it’s also about sheer strength at the finish. Susan Carol’s in great shape, but that girl is as strong as anyone I’ve seen in years.”

  He looked up at the TV screen. “I need to go make sure Susan Carol got through drug-testing okay. Sometimes a hard sprint like that and all the nerves can dehydrate you. Where are you going? Interview room’s the other way.”

  “I know,” Stevie said. “Bobby’s got the interview room. I’m looking for other people to talk to. Have you seen our guy J.P. or Reverend Anderson?”

  Ed gave him a look as if to say, “Why would you want to see them?” Then he shook his head. “No, haven’t seen them. I’m sure the Andersons are in the stands, waiting for the medal ceremony. But I did see J.P.’s partner, Bill what’s his name, hanging around with that Brickley guy who’s been nosing around all week.”

  “Robert Maurice?”

  “Yeah, that’s him. Boy, he’s the worst one yet. There’s just something so … oily about him. I saw them walking into the Coke hospitality room a couple minutes ago.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ed shrugged. “I don’t know why you’d want to talk to those guys if you didn’t have to. Though I suspect we won’t have to if Susan Carol doesn’t win the 200 on Wednesday. I want her to win, but if some of these people disappeared, I’d be very happy.”

  “Me too,” Stevie said.

  On that note they each rushed off in opposite directions. Stevie needed to figure out a way to get himself into the Coke hospitality room.

  The various corporate hospitality rooms for the moneyed set were all at the far end of the building, and you needed a special pass to gain entry. The pool deck level—which was also the locker room, interview room, and mixed zone level—was on the ground floor. The far end of the building had three stories of rooms all with great glass walls looking out over Olympic Park.

  Stevie hadn’t been in any of them but had walked past them and looked in from the outside.

  As he turned the corner and began passing various signs with corporate names on them—Speedo, Nike, Adidas, Rolex, and NBC all had rooms—his mind was racing to figure a way into the room that was coming up fast on his right, the one that said COCA-COLA.

  Maybe he could claim he was desperate for a Coke. That wouldn’t work. There was plenty of Coke in the media workroom. Walking past the NBC sign he braked to a halt. Maybe …

  There were two guards on either side of the door checking passes. He knew his would be rejected, so he stopped in front of the younger of the two guards and said, “I wonder if you can help me.”

  The guard eyed his media credential and said, “Are you lost? Media room is way at the other end of the building.”

  “No, not l
ost, but searching,” Stevie said. “I’ve just now been assigned to do a feature on Andrea Kremer from NBC that has to be written tonight. I can’t find any of the NBC PR people, and Andrea will be finished with her work for the night in a few minutes. I’ve got to find someone from NBC who can help me.”

  The guard looked a little confused, so Stevie pushed on. “The people in there from NBC who are actually working all have walkie-talkies—see?” He pointed at a young woman inside the room walking by them. “If you can just get one of them to come over here and talk to me outside for a minute, I’ll bet they can help get me to the right person.” He looked at his watch as if semi-panicked. “I’m really desperate.”

  He knew Susan Carol would be better suited for this job than he was. By now, the guard would have been under her spell and probably would have been personally escorting her to talk to Mark Lazarus, the president of NBC Sports.

  Maybe it was the fact that he asked to talk to someone outside the room—making it clear he wasn’t trying to crash—that sold the guard. In any event, he turned to his partner and said, “Martin, cover for me for just a moment, will you?”

  There wasn’t a huge crush to get into the room at that moment, so Martin nodded.

  “Stand over here to the side,” his new friend said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  He walked into the room. A moment later, he was back with the young woman Stevie had spotted before with a walkie-talkie.

  “Sabrina McGregor,” she said, shaking hands. “And you are?”

  “Steve Thomas,” he said. “I’m from the Washington Herald. I’m terribly sorry to bother you, but—”

  “You need someone who can help you get a minute with Andrea Kremer,” she said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Hang on, I’ve got just the person for you.”

  She suddenly bolted into the room again, leaving Stevie and the security guard standing there. No more than thirty seconds later, having melted into the crowd for an instant, she was back with a short, middle-aged man in tow.

  “Jon Miller, this is …”

  “Steve Thomas,” Stevie said, shaking hands with Jon Miller.

  “Among other things, Mr. Miller oversees our communications division.”

  “You need Andrea?” Jon Miller said, pulling out his walkie-talkie.

  Now Stevie had to make his move.

  “Can we talk for just one moment?” Stevie said. “I want to explain my story to you.”

  Miller shrugged. “Sure.” He turned back to the young woman. “I’ll take it from here, Sabrina,” he said.

  Stevie thanked her and the security guy, and he and Miller walked a few steps down the hall for privacy.

  “Look, Mr. Miller, I know you don’t know me from Adam—”

  “Sure I do,” Miller said. “You and Susan Carol Anderson are the kids who keep breaking big stories at big events. So why in the world do you need to talk to Andrea? I would think you’d be writing nothing but Susan Carol right now.”

  Stevie took a deep breath.

  “I don’t really need to talk to Andrea,” he said, causing Miller to raise an eyebrow, “but I do need a favor. I can’t really explain, but there is a story going on and Susan Carol can’t help me—”

  “No kidding,” Miller said, smiling.

  “So I’m working it alone. And I need very, very much to get into the Coke hospitality room right now.”

  Miller looked at him as if making some kind of decision.

  “Follow me.”

  They walked up to the guards at the door of the Coca-Cola suite, and Miller turned and pointed Stevie out to the guard. For a split second Stevie’s heart jumped: Maybe he was just turning him in for lying to get his attention. Before he could contemplate that any further, he heard Miller say, “Young man is with me.”

  The guard nodded. Stevie noticed that Miller’s pass had every possible letter on it, meaning he could go, he guessed, just about anywhere.

  He followed Miller into the room. Miller led him through the crowd a bit and then stopped.

  “Okay, you’re in,” he said. “But you’re on your own from here.”

  “I can’t thank you enough,” Stevie said.

  “Thank me by getting the bad guys, whoever they are,” Miller said. “Your track record tells me you know when something is up and that you’re trying to do the right thing. Good luck.”

  “Thanks. I’ll give it my best,” Stevie said, shaking his hand.

  Okay, Stevie thought, now to find the bad guys.

  He started circling the room slowly. He was dressed a lot less formally than most people, so he tried not to make eye contact with anyone. He moved slowly, not wanting to bump into anyone or draw too much attention to himself.

  There was a bar at the midway point of the room, and he stopped to ask for a Coke. That gave him a chance to stand and take in the room without looking too suspicious. The bartender handed him his Coke, and he moved to the side of the bar so he could keep looking and get out of the way at the same time.

  And then he saw them.

  They were standing in a corner with drinks in their hands. Stevie wondered why they had come in here to talk but then decided this was the place they were least likely to run into someone from a competing company. How they had gotten in was another question—but not his problem.

  His problem was different: how to get some clue what they were up to. He sipped his Coke as if that would somehow inspire him.

  Remarkably, it did.

  “Mr. Maurice?” he said, clearly startling both men when he approached. They were so intent on their conversation they didn’t even notice him until he opened his mouth.

  “Huh? Yeah?” Maurice said, giving Stevie a “Who are you and why are you bothering me?” look. The look on Arnold’s face wasn’t nearly as friendly. Susan Carol would have called it withering.

  He plowed ahead, trying to channel Susan Carol’s charm.

  “Steve Thomas,” he said, sticking his hand out. “We met a couple years ago in New Orleans at the Final Four. You were helping Chip Graber out by loaning him a car.…”

  Recognition finally flashed in Maurice’s dark eyes. “Oh yeah. You’re the kid who was with Susan Carol Anderson, right? The two of you were running around with Grabes because of that blackmail thing.”

  “Yeah,” Stevie said. “The blackmail thing.”

  The urge to say “The blackmail thing we got Chip out of” was almost overwhelming, but he resisted.

  “Mr. Arnold, how are you?” Stevie said, turning toward Bill’s withering glare.

  “How’d you get in here?” Arnold said in response.

  Stevie remembered Susan Carol saying that the reason J. P. Scott was the out-front guy for Lightning Fast was that he was better with people. Arnold was the deal maker, the numbers guy. He could see why.

  “Probably the same way you did,” Stevie said, choosing to brush off the challenge. “Some race, huh?”

  “You aren’t disappointed your girlfriend lost?” Maurice said.

  Stevie tried to look shocked. “My girlfriend’s an Olympic silver medalist. I think that’s amazing! And how can you feel bad after a race like that? And Elizabeth is so nice. What a great story she is, huh? You can’t help but feel happy for her.”

  Maurice grunted in disgust.

  “If you feel happy for her that she might be costing your girlfriend millions, that’s fine.”

  “I don’t think Susan Carol is worried about that,” Stevie said.

  “Yeah, well, her father is,” Arnold put in. He shook his head. “Do you know how many deals we have that rise or fall based on her winning a gold?”

  Stevie saw an opening. He turned to Maurice. “That true, Mr. Maurice? Brickley’s not interested in silver medalists?”

  “No one is interested in silver medalists, kid,” Maurice said.

  “So you might be going after Elizabeth Wentworth, then?”

  Arnold had just taken a sip of his drink and almost coughed
it up.

  Maurice actually smiled—a sinister smile, but a smile nevertheless.

  “You seem smart enough,” he said, “so I’m surprised you’d say something so dumb. Elizabeth Wentworth looks like a bodybuilder. Maybe she can get a commercial for one of those home gyms or something, but that’s about it.”

  “So it’s looks and a gold medal.”

  “You got it.”

  “So Svetlana Krylova would work for you too then, right?”

  Maurice’s eyes bugged out a bit as soon as Stevie brought up Krylova, but he recovered quickly. And he was looking at Bill Arnold pointedly when he said, “Krylova choked tonight. Blew it.”

  “She went under the world record.”

  “And didn’t even medal. Going under the world record and finishing fourth will get you a Coke in this room—if you ask nicely.”

  “Well, she’s better in the 200. And so is Susan Carol. Maybe you’ll get the result you want in the next race,” Stevie said.

  Bobby Maurice gave him a look that scared him.

  “I feel sure I will,” he said.

  25: THE OTHER GOLD

  Susan Carol was on a roller-coaster ride.

  After she and Elizabeth finished their poolside interview with Andrea Kremer, they were shuttled a few yards down the deck to a BBC interviewer. She and Elizabeth had been told they would be able to get back in the water to warm down once they had finished their TV bits and before they had to go to the interview room. But as soon as the BBC finished, an IOC official appeared and announced they were being taken to drug-testing.

  “But,” Susan Carol said, “we were told we’d get to warm down first.”

  “You can warm down after the medal ceremony,” said the official, whose name tag said JEAN RENAUD.

  “That will be almost an hour after we finished swimming,” Elizabeth said. “You’ve got to give us five minutes or something.”

  “No, we don’t,” Renaud said. “You both have to be drug-tested, or you will be considered to have tested positive for refusing the test.”