As a former competitive swimmer (alright… nowhere near Olympic material), the result of Friday’s Men’s 100m Butterfly race was stunning.

I was dumbfounded.  And then a wee bit angry.

Don’t get me wrong, I am happy Phelps won. I’ll get to that in a second…

Going back into the ’80’s, when swimming was a daily part of my life, I can still hear Coach Candy Korthal’s saying, “Swim to the wall! Swim to the wall!”  She knew the race didn’t go to the fastest.  The race went to the fastest to the wall.  For four years, through three coaches, the same thing got drilled into my head:  PUSH AS HARD AS YOU CAN TO THE WALL!

The race isn’t over at the last stroke before the wall. It’s over AT the wall.

So here I am on Saturday, stunned at Cavic.  And utterly stunned by his remarks quoted in The NY Times:

“People will be asking me this for years, and people I’m sure will be bringing this up for years, saying, ‘You won that race,’ ” Cavic said. “If I lost by a tenth of a second or two tenths of a second, I could probably be a lot cooler about this. But with a hundredth of a second, I’ll have a whole lot more people saying, ‘You really won that race.’ And that kind of makes me feel good, but I’m completely happy with where I am.”

No.  You did not win that race.

You could have.  You were beautiful and beautifully fast.  The last 25 meters I was mesmerized by your form, holding my breath and remembering with a pounding heart the excitement and comraderie of competitive swimming and cheering you on. You had that race!

But you dropped the ball.  You coasted in.  I stood in disbelief as the end of the race, from every possible angle, was replayed over and over and over again.

And then disbelief turned to irrational anger (afterall, I wasn’t the one racing!). You handed the race to Phelps, who absolutely, competitively, took it from you.  And for this reason, for the remembrance of a basic tenet of training - that ALL of us who ever swam know can make or break a race - Phelps won.

He was fast.

And when it really mattered, he was faster to the wall.

For this, he deserves the Gold.

Tags: beijing olympics, cavic, phelps, swimming

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 16th, 2008 at 9:51 am and is filed under My Gypsy Soul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.