Relentless Spirit

by Missy Franklin

  Coach Bauerle could see I was thrown. I guess I must’ve stammered something in response, or maybe all the color went out of my face. He said, “Unless you don’t think you’re up to it.” Not really asking, but sort of.

  I heard it like some kind of test, and I answered without letting myself think about it. I said, “No, if you think I can do it, then I can do it. Absolutely.”

  Absolutely. It’s like the word was coming from someone else’s lips. I was psyching myself up, talking myself into it, the whole time trying not to let on how overmatched I was feeling about all of this. Almost like I was still expecting that teddy bear to come flying back out of the stands. On the one hand, I knew my times were good enough to justify my swimming in the leadoff spot—but then, on the other hand, I couldn’t help but see myself as a little kid, going up against all these grown women, who’d been competing for their national teams for years.

  It turned out I didn’t have a lot of time to worry about any of this because the next thing I knew, we were lining up for the race. I was going to lead off for the US team, followed by Christine Magnuson and Amanda Weir, and Dana Vollmer in the anchor spot. The European team was led by Francesca Halsall, followed by Daniela Schreiber and Daniela Samulski of Germany, and Lizzie Simmonds of Great Britain in the anchor spot. The good news here was that I didn’t have a whole lot of time to worry about my opponents. But, even then, I knew that worrying about my opponents would only hurt my racing: I almost never worried about my opponents. To this day, I swim my own race and let everything else fall from there. Even as a kid, I approached each event with a set of blinders on. It didn’t matter who was swimming in the lane next to me, I always told myself. I could control only what I could control, so I kept my focus on my own lane. Over the years, I’ve come to know most of the top swimmers in the field. Many of them have become good friends. I’ve learned their tendencies, their tactics. I still try to tune them out when I step to the starting blocks, but at least I know this stuff, on some level. It registers. But back then I didn’t even know my own teammates, and I certainly didn’t know the names or reputations of these top European swimmers—they just weren’t on my radar, not yet. It wasn’t any kind of strategy. It was just that I didn’t know any better. All I could do was get in the pool and swim my little heart out.

  So that’s what I did. But to me, it felt like I was struggling. And I guess I was, only not in the ways I thought at the time. Remember, this was a head-to-head relay, so there was just me and this one other girl—a girl who just happened to be one of the best freestyle swimmers in the world. I didn’t know this, of course. All I knew was that I had an obligation to my team, to the other three swimmers in the relay. All I knew was I had to do my part. I’d always cherished these relay swims. There’s this tremendous sense of responsibility you feel to one another, so I didn’t want to let anybody down. But there I was, well off the pace my opponent was setting. When there’s just two of you in the pool, it’s hard not to keep an eye on the girl in the next lane, and when I got to the 75-meter mark I was ready to start crying. As I went into my third turn and pushed off the wall, I could see that I was about a body length behind. That’s a big gap for my teammates to have to make up, so naturally I was devastated. Really, Francesca was just crushing me. I kept telling myself, “Just get your hand to the wall, Missy. Just get your hand to the wall.” Like I was willing myself over those final meters. It felt to me like I’d never finish—my “career” was just getting started, and already I’d counted myself out.

  Oh my, I felt horrible. Beaten. Thrashed. I touched the wall more than a second behind the European team—and it might as well have been ten seconds. I’d let my team down. I’d buried us. And so I hung my head and tried to disappear. But do you know what? Christine found a way to make up half that body length. Then Amanda held on until Dana could rescue us at the end with one of the most amazing anchor legs I’ve ever seen. We ended up winning by a full second. Still, I felt just awful, and I was near tears when I got back to the team area. Everyone was hugging each other and jumping up and down, but underneath those congratulations I felt sure that everyone was looking at me, judging me, resenting that they’d had to pick up my slack. Of course, that’s not at all what they were thinking, and a part of me knew that wasn’t what they were thinking, but I couldn’t shake the thought.

  After a couple of beats, Coach Bauerle came up to me. He could see I was down, fighting back tears. He said, “Missy, what’s wrong?”

  So I told him.

  He said, “You’re kidding, right?” Like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  I shook my head. I said, “I totally messed up. She got so far ahead of me. I’m so, so sorry.”

  He said, “You know who you were swimming against, don’t you?”

  At the time, I only knew Francesca Halsall by name—actually, everybody around the pool called her Fran. I didn’t know her résumé. I didn’t know about her showing at the last Olympics. But Coach Bauerle filled me in. He said, “She’s literally the fastest 100-meter freestyler in the world right now.”

  Well, that made me feel a little better—but only a little.

  And then he said, “Your time? The time you ‘totally messed up’? That was one of the fastest American times, ever.”

  Okay, so that helped, too—but again, only a little. Even at fourteen, I was so competitive, so hard on myself, I couldn’t stand getting beat, especially as the rookie swimmer on a relay where I was representing my country. It didn’t matter who it was doing the beating. It only mattered that there was all that room for improvement—a full body length, in this case.

  So how was I struggling, exactly? Well, it wasn’t in my performance, apparently. It was in how I’d framed that performance in my head. It was in the way I’d let the moment get too big for me, when really it was just like any other swim, against any other swimmer, in any other pool. All I could do was all I could do, and it didn’t matter what was going on in the lane next to me. It didn’t matter that I was going up against the best in the world. It only mattered what I was putting out there. And so the great lesson for me, coming out of that Duel in the Pool meet, was to trust in my ability, to believe in myself, to know that I belonged on this level. It’s a lesson I carry with me to this day, but there was something transformative about it as it took shape in my head. Something uplifting—reassuring, too. I had to let myself think that the little girl on the receiving end of that teddy bear with my signature on it would be just as thrilled to find a place of honor for that teddy bear in her bedroom as I had been to find a place on my bedroom wall for that picture of Rebecca Soni.

  I might have been only fourteen years old, but I’d earned my spot on that team, same as everyone else. I belonged, same as everyone else. And I could only swim my little heart out, same as everyone else.

  ONE

  HOW WE GOT HERE

  Ohmygoodness . . . that first Duel in the Pool meet was crazy, but it’s important to understand that I didn’t step to the starting blocks in Manchester, England, as a fully formed national-team swimmer ready to compete on the world stage. That’s not how you get to be in such a big spot—at least, that’s not how I got to be in such a big spot. No way. In my case, I was only able to take my place on that unbelievable relay team because I had the love, attention, and support of my own unbelievable team at home—my mom and dad.

  My parents have always been there for me. That’s a line you hear all the time from athletes, from young people giving thanks or showing respect, but with me it’s more than just a line. It’s the essence of who I am—as a daughter, a swimmer, a student, a friend, a caring human being. My parents are at the heart of everything I do, everything I am, everything I might become. Whatever I’ve accomplished, I will always be their work in progress! Really, I wouldn’t be half the person I am today were it not for the extra efforts of Richard and D.A. Franklin. Without my father, I wouldn’t be nearl
y as tall (appreciate ya, Big Rich!), and without my mother I wouldn’t be nearly as focused or determined. But my parents’ impact goes beyond swimming. It goes to the heart of who we are and how we are as a family, and I’ve come to believe it’s something to celebrate. That’s why I’m writing this book—to invite readers into our lives in such a way that they can see how things happen (and how they don’t happen!) in our house, in case they might relate.

  Actually, I should say that’s why we are writing this book, because my parents are right here by my side, the same way they are in everything I do. It’s a team effort. The words are mostly mine, but the memories, the stories, the lessons learned along the way, are all shared, all connected. The life we’ve made, the values we’ve come to share, the goals we’ve set and met as a family. It’s been a true collaboration. We’re all in this together, and since my swimming career is what’s put our family in a kind of spotlight, we figured it made sense for me to be the one to take the microphone (so to speak!) and share some of our experiences.

  So here goes. . . .

  I’ll start by stating the obvious: there’s no blueprint for raising an Olympic champion. There’s no blueprint for raising a child, period. The Olympics are not a realistic goal. It’s more like a pipe dream, a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. A happy by-product of a healthy, well-rounded approach to life. So many things have to break in just the right way, at just the right times for a young athlete to even have a shot to represent his or her country on the world stage. Let’s be clear: I didn’t set out to win an Olympic gold medal. That wasn’t even a small sliver of a fraction of a part of my thinking, back when I started out. And my parents certainly weren’t thinking in this way—they just wanted to see me happy, and they could see early on that swimming made me happy, so they went with it.

  That’s all it was, at first. And, in many ways, that’s all it remains. Swimming makes me happy. And so I keep swimming.

  Now, I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been incredibly lucky and incredibly blessed. But I’ve also been taught to believe that we make our own luck and build our own blessings, so what is realistic is for parents to create an environment where their kids can thrive at whatever it is they choose to pursue. It doesn’t have to be sports. It can be art or music, math or science, engineering or computers. It can be doing well in school or becoming a good person. My thing just happened to be sports, although I was also big into doing well in school and becoming a good person, which in the long run is way more important and everlasting, but since most people know me as an athlete, let’s just stick to sports for the moment.

  I was an active kid, which is probably the understatement of my lifetime. I was always running, jumping, playing. I was competitive, too. I think I got that from my dad—not because he pushed me or challenged me but because he was a good athlete and I wanted to be just like him. But at the same time, I was the kind of competitive athlete who didn’t want to beat her opponent into the ground. I think I got that from my mom—not because she was all touchy-feely but because she was a great collector of friendships and experiences, and I wanted to be just like her, too. I mean, where’s the fun in competing if it’s just one endless grudge match, if you’re chasing down one opponent, enemy, victim, after another? The idea, for me, was to go at it hard with my friends, to push one another, to push myself, an idea that came in equal measure from both my parents, without either one of them ever having to say as much. If one of my friends touched the wall ahead of me, I was happy for her, really and truly. If I’d given my all, and put in my best effort, I was happy for me, also, really and truly. And my parents were happy in the same way, for the same reasons.

  Looking back, I’d have to say this was all a part of my parents’ “game plan” with me: to show rather than tell. They lit a path and set an example and I could only follow. Except with them it wasn’t even a game plan, just an extension of who they were and how they’d chosen to live their lives. See, my parents were a little bit older when they finally got around to having me. A little bit older than what or whom? Well, a little bit older than my friends’ parents, certainly. A little bit older than the parents I would see in movies and on television. And a little bit older than they might have imagined themselves to be, if they’d ever closed their eyes and imagined themselves as parents. My father was forty-nine when I was born, and my mother was forty-five, and I didn’t exactly come into this world in a conventional way, as I will explain soon enough. By the time I came along, as my father likes to say when reporters ask about our family, my parents had six postgraduate degrees between them, almost a hundred years of life experience, and enough ups and downs to start a roller coaster conglomerate. They were financially comfortable, professionally comfortable, domestically comfortable. They had a great marriage. Dad had been a Fortune 500 executive, and Mom was a doctor. They’d traveled all over the world and had put whatever egos and insecurities they’d had as young adults to bed. They were on solid, solid ground, good and ready to be parents, if that’s what God had in mind for them, so that when this little child came into their world they stood to welcome her with the will and the confidence of two accomplished, seasoned people.

  Let me tell you, that kind of preparedness can make all the difference. Although to hear my parents tell it, it’s not like they were preparing for any one thing in particular. They were just living their lives, building a shared future, and it just worked out that there was finally room in there, room for me!

  Now, I don’t want to get ahead of the story—their story, my story, our story—so let’s keep it in the pool for just a little while longer. For as far back as I can remember, these stories were centered around the water. When I close my eyes and picture my childhood, I can almost smell the chlorine. I’m laughing, jumping, splashing. I think what I loved so much about swimming was how calming it was, how therapeutic, how safe and warm I felt in the water. From the very beginning, I knew that’s where I belonged. Want proof? There’s a great photo taken on one of our Franklin family vacations: We were at the ocean and there we were, just getting pummeled by the waves. I was about three months old, in my dad’s arms, and my cousin Zach was about nine months old, in my uncle Harry’s arms. Of course, the waves weren’t very big at all, so the pummeling was relative, but to us little kids the waves must have seemed giant-size. Or at least they were to Zach, who looks in the picture like he’s crying hysterically. We were all together to celebrate my christening. My uncle Harry and my aunt Deb are my godparents. Zach never became a swimmer, but he did become an awesome football player. Kicking seemed to run in the family. His older sister, Kiley, was a great keeper for her soccer team.

  Every time I see this picture (and believe me, my mom takes it out and shows it to me all the time!), I’m reminded of how much I loved the water, even as a baby. I was just three months old, and I had this giant, splash-eating grin. It was a freeze-frame moment, captured by my mom or my aunt Deb, but you could see that I was made for the water, even then. You could see I was cut in a different way.

  By two or three years old, one of my very favorite things was to stay in the water for so long I’d shrivel up and get prune-hands. You know that sensation? Oh, there was nothing better than getting out of the pool after being in the water all day and just lying back on my towel and feeling all those weird little wrinkles on my fingertips. They were like badges of honor, the swimmer’s version of calluses, and I wore them proudly.

  My mom always tells people she was a terrible swimmer, and I’m here to report that she’s telling the truth. She’s still a terrible swimmer. (Sorry, Mom!) In fact, she avoids the water, if at all possible. That’s one of the reasons she encouraged me to swim, she says. She didn’t want me to be afraid of the water. She wanted me to feel comfortable at the beach and at the pool, so that was her focus early on. It never occurred to her that I’d take to it in such a way that I’d beg her to sign me up for our summer club team, the Heritage Green Gators, or that
I’d start swimming in races and breaking age-group records and pushing myself to new heights. And I’m pretty sure she never felt that adrenaline shot of pure joy that used to hit me when I’d marvel at my prune-fingers. It wasn’t about any of that back then. It was just about getting me comfortable in and around the water, setting me up so that I could confidently add swimming to my list of activities and move about the planet with one less thing to worry about.

  Again, this wasn’t a game plan or strategy. There was no parenting book my mother consulted to help her figure out this kind of stuff. No, she and my father went by their gut; that’s all. They kind of made it up as they went along, just as so many first-time parents do. They took what they remembered from their own childhoods—the good and the bad—and attached it all to what they wanted for me and my childhood. And it’s not like they sat down and talked about any of this with me. They simply let me do my own thing in such a way that every imaginable thing was on the table.

  Here’s an example. My parents like to talk about the difference between motivating and enabling, but it’s not like it was any kind of ongoing conversation in our house when I was growing up. As I became more and more involved in swimming, the differences became more and more apparent, but those differences were never pointed out to me at the time. It was up to me to kind of figure it out for myself.

  My father’s actually given a couple of talks on this (it’s one of his favorite topics!), so I’ll let him explain: