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.
Yesterday, Swimswam posted an editorial advocating that the US join the rest of the world and go to swimming meters. Now, I haven’t read that article, but I’m going to respond to it because this is the internet and it’s incumbent for all of us to just spout off without having considered anyone else’s point of view. Before I could do that, Steve Schaffer said it best in a facebook comment:
