Rush for the Gold: Mystery at the Olympics (13 page)

Stevie ended up having lunch with Wally Dicks, who finished forty-second among eighty-five swimmers entered in the 100 breaststroke. He was every bit as nice as Kelleher had said and had a good story to tell: He had stopped swimming for fifteen years after college and had started again because he needed something to distract him while he was going through a divorce. He had met his current wife at a swim meet, they had a beautiful little girl, and Wally was swimming faster than he had ever dreamed possible.

A perfect story to write on the first day of the meet.

Susan Carol had won her heat in the morning with ease and cruised in second in her semifinal that evening. Overall, she qualified fourth for the final the next night. Which put her in great position. But to make the team, she’d have to finish in the top two.…

Tuesday seemed to last forever. Stevie tried to focus on the meet, but there were no Wally Dicks stories to write and his assignment for the day was to write the lead on the women’s 100-fly final anyway. Kelleher would write a column on either the 100 fly or on the men’s 200-freestyle semifinals—which would be Ryan Lochte’s second and Michael Phelps’s first event of the week. The next night, in the final, they would go head to head.

Kelleher and Mearns were both working on other things that morning, and after watching what seemed like dozens of heats, Stevie couldn’t take sitting in the stands any longer and decided to go for a walk. The heat had broken a little bit: It was still in the nineties, but the humidity wasn’t quite as unbearable.

The deciding game of the College World Series was going to be played that night in the new stadium that was directly across the parking lot from the arena—which guaranteed absolute gridlock in the downtown area. Stevie decided to walk in the direction of the stadium, thinking he might be able to get a look inside.

He walked across the parking lot and began to circle the stadium to see if there was an open gate or if there were offices somewhere that might give him access to the ballpark. He wasn’t planning to go very far because after ten minutes outside, he was already sweating pretty profusely.

As he rounded a corner, he thought he saw what he was looking for: ticket booths. They jutted out from the corner of the ballpark and, even if there was no one working, at least there’d be shade. Three men had clearly thought the same thing because they were standing in the shade talking. As Stevie approached, he could tell they were having an animated conversation.

He was about to veer away so as not to eavesdrop when the wind picked up the voice of the man who had his back to him and blew it in his direction. He almost gasped when he heard it because he recognized it immediately: Reverend Anderson. Instinctively, he slipped behind one of the ticket
booths so he wouldn’t be seen. But he could now make out the other two men. One was J. P. Scott. The other was Ed Brennan.

He took a deep breath and edged as far as he could in their direction without revealing himself. Whether it was the wind or their raised voices, he could hear pretty clearly.

“This is just the way it has to be, Ed. You’re wrong. I haven’t forgotten what you’ve done for Susan Carol and I know how much she respects you. I’m truly sorry you found out about this the way you did. I wanted the three of us to sit down when we were all back home next week.”

“You think firing me in person after the trials would make it any better, Reverend? You think that would make it okay with Susan Carol?”

“Ed, be realistic,” Scott chimed in. “Joe Berger has coached eight Olympians. You’re a great high school coach, but this is the big time. Susan Carol needs the best.”

For a moment Stevie thought the conversation had ended or that the wind had shifted because he heard nothing. Then he realized that Coach Brennan had turned away from J. P. Scott and was talking directly to Susan’s dad.

“Look, Reverend, you know Susan Carol is already worried that, under this guy’s influence, you’re turning into another pushy, money-grabbing, teenage-jock dad. If you just let her swim and be herself, the money will come down the line.”

“Excuse me?” Reverend Anderson said, clearly indignant. “My first concern is Susan Carol and you know that.”

“Really?” Brennan said. “Then why would you make a decision like this with no input from her at all? Why would you go so far as to hire another coach without consulting her? Who’s in charge here—you and your daughter, or this guy?”

Stevie was stunned. How could they fire Ed? Of course they were trying to fire
him
as Susan Carol’s friend, so maybe it wasn’t that stunning.

“Ed, look,” Reverend Anderson said, reaching for Ed’s shoulder. “You have done a
great
job getting her this far. We want you to be Susan Carol’s friend and we really want you to support this decision—”

“Are you kidding me?” Ed said, shaking loose from Reverend Anderson. “Look, I’ve never tried to claim I was God’s gift to swimming—unlike Joe Berger, by the way—but I know I’m the best coach for your daughter. I know her in ways that no new coach can match no matter how many Olympians he’s trained.

“Why put her through this, especially now? Susan Carol’s got enough on her plate without dealing with questions about why her coach got fired right after the Olympic Trials.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Reverend Anderson said. “We’ll just say Susan Carol needed higher-level coaching, which happens to be the truth. Susan Carol will see that it’s necessary, I’m sure.”

“NO, SHE WON’T!”

Whoops, Stevie realized the voice he had just heard shouting was his own. He had heard enough—too much.
He stepped out from behind the ticket booth. Reverend Anderson spun around while J. P. Scott and Ed Brennan squinted in his direction.

“Stevie!” Reverend Anderson said. “What are you doing here? Did you follow us?”

“Of course he followed us,” J. P. Scott said. “Why else would he be here?”

“No, I did
not
follow you,” Stevie shot back. “I got bored and walked over here to see the ballpark. But I did hear what you were talking about. And I can’t believe you would do this to Susan Carol.”

J. P. Scott stalked over to where he was standing and grabbed his arm. “How dare you? This has nothing to do with you.”

“Let go of his arm, J.P.,” Reverend Anderson said, coming up behind him.

“Reverend, let me handle this.…”

“Let go of his arm.”

Scott gave Stevie a cold-as-ice look and let go.

“Stevie, J.P. is right about one thing,” Reverend Anderson said. “I know you care about Susan Carol, but decisions like this aren’t really any of your business. The grown-ups have to decide what’s best for her.”

“Like hell they do,” Stevie yelled, then felt a little bit embarrassed for using the word
hell
in front of a minister. “All you grown-ups are only making her miserable when this should be the most exciting time of her life. If you’d spent any time listening to your daughter instead of these agents over the past few months, you’d know that.”

Ed Brennan had walked up behind Reverend Anderson. “The kid’s right.”

Reverend Anderson’s face was red, and Stevie was pretty sure it wasn’t the heat. “Stevie, I’m asking you one last time: Don’t make this any tougher for Susan Carol than it already is. There is nothing wrong with what J.P. and his people are doing. No one is lying or cheating or committing a crime. This talent she has can secure her future for a long time. If you had any athletic ability at all, your father would be doing the same thing I’m doing.”

Stevie couldn’t argue about his lack of athletic ability. But he didn’t think for one second his father would be acting like this.

“My father would never fire my coach without talking to me about it,” he said. “As if what I wanted didn’t matter at all. If you do this, you’re going to break Susan Carol’s heart.”

“She’ll be fine,” Reverend Anderson said. “I’ve talked to Joe Berger myself. He’s a good man and a good coach. Ed, I’m truly sorry and I’m sorry Coach Berger said anything to you.”

“I guess the fact that he couldn’t wait to tell me shows what a good man he is,” Ed said. “By the way, J.P., you don’t happen to represent Joe, do you? He’s been doing a lot of clinics lately. Plus, he’s starting that swim school in Westchester.”

J.P. said nothing, but he was also red in the face now.

Reverend Anderson sighed.

“Come on, J.P., it’s hot out here,” he said. “Let’s get back inside. Ed, I’m genuinely sorry.”

“No, Don, I really don’t think you are,” Ed said. “But I think you will be.”

Reverend Anderson stared at him for a second, started to say something, then shook his head and walked away. Scott followed him.

Once they started back across the parking lot, Stevie looked at Ed Brennan. “What’re you going to do?” he asked. “You have to be Susan Carol’s coach.”

“Don’t panic,” Ed said. “Clearly they weren’t going to tell her anything until the trials were over, and I have no intention of saying anything either. Let’s get her through this meet without any more drama if we can, okay?”

“How can you be sure they won’t say something now that they know you know?”

“Because tonight is the biggest race of her life. If she doesn’t make the team, all their plans go up in smoke.”

“Or sink,” Stevie said, thinking that was a more apt metaphor.

Ed Brennan smiled for a moment, then shook his head. “Well, we don’t want our girl to sink either,” he said. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride back to the hotel.”

Ed Brennan’s instinct about Reverend Anderson and J. P. Scott keeping quiet proved to be correct. Neither of them said anything to Susan Carol about their plan to fire her coach.

Stevie told Bobby and Tamara what was going on when he met them for lunch. They seemed less shocked than Stevie had been.

“We’ve seen this happen before,” Kelleher said. “I call it ‘blinded by gold’ syndrome. The agents wave so much money and glory in front of a parent’s face, it’s almost as if they can’t see past it.”

“But Reverend Anderson?” Stevie said. “Wouldn’t you think with his experience working as the chaplain for the Panthers and what happened when his brother-in-law became a tennis agent, he’d be the last guy who could be blinded?”

“Yeah, I would,” Kelleher said. “I guess this is proof of how powerful the syndrome can be.”

Tamara nodded. “I’m sure he honestly believes he’s doing what’s best for Susan Carol and his family. This isn’t Tiger Woods’s dad turning his son into a human ATM machine. This is a father who sees a chance to make life much easier for himself and all his children in one fell swoop.”

For the first time Stevie was glad that he couldn’t see Susan Carol before her race that evening. He could fake it with texts, but he suspected she’d be able to see in his face that something was wrong. It was going to be a long afternoon.

They walked to the arena about an hour before the finals were scheduled to start, and the place was already jammed. With 15,000 fans packed in the stands and the fifty-meter pool shimmering on the arena floor, the CenturyLink
Center was quite a sight. Even Bobby and Tamara were impressed.

“Didn’t they hold the trials in a parking lot a few years back?” Stevie said, remembering something he had read.

Kelleher nodded. “Yeah. The pool in Indy was the biggest swimming venue in the country and it seats under 5,000. So when they thought they could sell more seats than that, they put a temporary pool—like this one—in a parking lot in Long Beach and built temporary stands around it. That was ’04, when Phelps was emerging as a star. But racing outside isn’t ideal.”

Susan Carol’s 100-butterfly final was the first event of the night. Because the television window was exactly one hour—8 to 9 p.m. in the East—there was no fooling around with pre-race TV chatter. Stevie, Bobby, and Tamara made straight for their seats even though there was assigned seating in the media section. Mike Unger had told them there were 300 seats and close to 400 accredited media.

“If there’s an empty seat, someone will grab it,” he said. “Unless you want to wrestle with them for your seat, give yourself a few extra minutes.”

Stevie could feel his stomach churning when they sat down. He knew how much this meant to Susan Carol. He remembered something she had said to him after her win in Shanghai: “It was just incredible to swim that well and to win. But when you’re a swimmer, you don’t grow up dreaming of the World Championships, you grow up dreaming of the Olympics. Now I really have a chance to get there.”

This was it. This was her chance. But it wouldn’t be
easy. There were two swimmers in the race who had gone under 57 seconds before—Christine Magnuson and Dana Vollmer. Four others—Susan Carol, Kathleen Hersey, Felicia Lee, and Elizabeth Wentworth—had been under 58.5, led by the 57.88 Susan Carol had gone in Charlotte. Wentworth, who was sixteen and came from Florida, had actually qualified first with a time of 58.04—her best time by more than a second.

Stevie figured these six swimmers of the eight in the race all had a shot at the two spots on the Olympic team. The field was that tight.

Stevie heard a roar go up and saw the swimmers emerging from the tunnel that led from the pre-race ready room into the arena. There was no waving at friends or family as they marched to the blocks. Each was trying to stay calm and focused.

Susan Carol had her head down, her long brown hair tied into a ponytail that he knew she would unknot and push up on her head when she put on her bathing cap. Off to the side, Stevie saw Ed Brennan standing with the other coaches, ever-present stopwatch in his right hand.

“Doesn’t look like there’s any doubt who Susan Carol’s coach is right now,” he said, pointing him out to Kelleher.

“That’s good,” Kelleher said. “But right now there’s nothing he can do for Susan Carol. It’s all up to her.”

Stevie took a deep breath. The race would take less than a minute once the starter’s horn went off. It would feel a lot longer than that.

T
he swimmers had a moment to get ready before they were introduced. This was not an uncomplicated process since it involved taking off sweats (top and bottom) and a T-shirt, footwear—flip-flops for some, sneakers for others—and, in some cases, baseball caps. All of that was placed in a basket that was scooped up by a volunteer to hold until after the race. Then came the race preparation: hair put under caps, goggles adjusted, suits pulled as tight as possible. Stevie often wondered why the swimmers couldn’t walk out more ready to go, but it was all part of the ritual.