It’s hard to pinpoint the moment where I finally realized that this wouldn’t be a normal Olympics for the USA. If I had to choose, it was during the Men’s 200 Fly. America had already only managed one semi-finalist, the 17 year old phenom Thomas Heilman. Heilman put in a valiant semi-final swim, but ultimately tied up on the final stretch. There would be no American finalist in the 200 fly.
If US Olympic Trials are the “swim coach Super Bowl”, then I’m out of superlatives for the Olympics. Perhaps because it is more exclusive in terms of what coaches actually get to don their glistening synthetic polo shirts. The Olympics just is, it’s the assumed final boss of everything that we do, the aspiration of many but also an unrealistic dream for most of that many.
Last week, Rutgers coach Petra Martin resigned (not willingly, it seems) after swimmers came forward to say what they had experienced swimming for her at Rutgers.
What shook me reading this story was not the things that Martin was accused of. Unfortunately, experience has taught me that this behavior is common and accepted in college sports and beyond. What troubled me is that Rutgers, because of their own history, felt above-average compulsion to actually do something about it.
