Relentless Spirit

by Missy Franklin

  That semifinal swim in the 100 back . . . that’s when I knew for sure that this wasn’t something I could set right—not right away. I couldn’t snap my fingers and will it so. My time was good enough to move on . . . but nowhere near enough to move on! So I flipped a switch and started thinking of my 200 free. Then that was all I could think about. One race at a time, that was my mind-set, and here it worked out that I had to essentially give up on that 100 back final in order to go full throttle in the 200 free. There’s always a trade-off, only so much effort to go around. I took a quick inventory of what I had in reserve, where I was in the field, where I stood to gain the most. Truth be told, that 200 free semifinal at trials was actually the first race where I kind of felt like me again—the first time since the Minnesota pro series the previous November where I was happy with my swim. All those months, I’d kept telling myself I would be ready when I needed to be ready, but my times weren’t getting any better and I wasn’t getting any closer to ready, and now here I was, up against it.

  I actually came out of the pool feeling positive about the finals. I was smiling a whole lot more, shaking a whole lot less. But then, thirteen minutes later, I was back in the pool, facing down a tough, tough field in the 100-meter back, and I could almost feel this fresh bit of confidence leak from my pores as I got into position. Sure enough, my start felt pretty good, but when I turned at the fifty I could see the whole field ahead of me—a sight I hadn’t seen in a finals event in longer than I could remember. All I could do at that point was try to finish with everything I had.

  There wasn’t even time to cry, not right away. During warm-down, absolutely. But you have a long way to go before warm-down. First you have to finish the race and face the consequences. You get up, you congratulate your teammates. You’re thrilled for the swimmers who made the team—really and truly. You’re heartbroken for the ones who didn’t—also, really and truly. You talk to the media, try to come up with an original way to say how disappointed you are, how you’re still hoping to swim your way onto the team. And then you try to keep it together beneath the stares of all these well-meaning people who keep looking at you like you’re . . . broken. Like there’s been a death in the family.

  Then, and only then, can you get back in the water in the warm-down pool and bawl your eyes out and get down to some world-class croggling.

  Next day, I had the final in the 200 free, so I had to let go of that disappointment in the 100 back, and at that point I would have given every drop of sweat and blood I could muster to make it on the team. That was all I was thinking about, just then, because the idea of not making the team was unacceptable. There was no room for that outcome in my thinking, even though I’d left plenty of room for that outcome in the way I was swimming. And by some miracle, there was enough heart and soul and fight in me to power on the jets after that final turn in the 200. To this day, I have no idea how I got my hand to the wall ahead of all those other swimmers, finishing in second place. The last twenty-five meters, I was swimming out of my mind, like I was in a frenzy, and the devastation I’d felt the night before, the distress . . . it all came out in my performance. And it all came out to the good.

  (Good enough, anyway.)

  All along, you’re taught to think in terms of finishing first or second to secure a spot on the Olympic team, but when there’s a relay involved there are also spots for the third- and fourth-place finishers in a finals heat (and sometimes even the fifth- and sixth-place finishers earn invites). Normally, it’s all about touching the wall first, but I was so far beyond normally by this point that all I wanted was to punch my ticket for Rio, to get there by any means necessary, and here it meant that by finishing second in the finals, I’d qualified in two events—the 200-meter freestyle and the 4x200-meter freestyle relay.

  I was overjoyed—but at the same time, I was terrified, because it felt to me like I didn’t deserve to be going to Rio. Like I’d been overmatched in Omaha and would only be more overmatched at the Olympics. It had taken every ounce of grit and guile I had over that final fifty just to qualify. I didn’t see how I stood a chance against the very best in the world—not with the way I’d been shaken at the trials. Not with the way I’d been swimming.

  It turned out that I managed to qualify in the 200 back as well—I guess because I let out such a huge sigh of relief I could finally breathe, and relax. But it also turned out that I was right to worry, because by the time I got to Rio I was so emotionally drained and unsure of myself I couldn’t possibly swim to my ability.

  Again, you could make the case that I was done before the games were even under way—I didn’t even make it to the finals in my two individual events, and there’s no need to revisit those letdowns here. (Too soon!) There was, however, the matter of our 4x200-meter relay team, which was the heavy favorite to win the gold medal, and because of my second-fastest time at trials I was virtually assured a spot in the relay final. At least, that’s how it normally goes, but as I’ve already mentioned, normally went out the window in Omaha. You see, I wasn’t the only one in Rio who was concerned about the way I was swimming. My parents were concerned, of course. My teammates could see I was struggling. But my coaches were perhaps most worried of all because it fell to them to put together a winning lineup for this relay, which in turn had me worried because I didn’t want to get in the way.

  The night before the relays I sat down with Greg Meehan, one of our assistant coaches, to discuss the different roles I might play on the team. Greg is the head coach for the Stanford men’s and women’s team, and I was assigned to his “team” while in Rio. Todd was there at the games as well, but he wasn’t part of the Olympic coaching staff, so Greg was the one who took care of me. Throughout the games, he was a tremendous source of support and encouragement. That day, he laid out the situation from the coaches’ perspective. He told me that my second-place spot at trials put me in a special position that the coaching staff meant to honor, but that there were no guarantees. Technically, it gave me a spot in the finals, but ultimately it was up to the coaches to determine the lineup. He said I could swim the qualifying relay in the morning and see what happens. Or, I could sit out the morning and save my strength for the finals, with the possibility that four swimmers go faster than my individual times and I’d be out for the finals, too.

  To me, it was a no-brainer. I had to compete. I wasn’t thinking about a medal. I was just thinking how devastated I’d be walking away from this meet without even swimming in a single relay, when I’d been used to swimming in all three.

  I told Greg I wanted to swim in the morning, but that I’d leave it up to the coaches. I said, “If I’m on a morning relay, if I’m on a finals relay, if I’m not on any relay at all, I’ll support your decision. I want what is best for this team, whether or not that includes me.”

  These weren’t empty words. They were heartfelt. I would have been crushed, of course, but I would have stood with my teammates and stepped aside as they made their way to the pool, because it wasn’t about feelings at this point. It was about putting the team in the best position to win a gold medal. I believed this with all my heart—even though my heart was breaking a little bit, just by saying it.

  I did swim that morning and managed to post the second-fastest split on the team. I didn’t feel good about my time, but I felt good about my split—meaning, I did what my team needed me to do. We had the lead, and I stayed in the lead, and we got the team seeded first for the finals. Job done. As I was warming down, Frank Busch, our head coach, came over to the pool to talk to me. To his great credit, he came over straightaway and got right to it. He congratulated me on my swim, told me I’d done exactly what I needed to do, but said that he was going to go another way in the finals. He walked me through his thinking, which at this point was mine as well—unfortunately. He told me that Allison Schmitt earned her spot with flying colors, after leading us off with an amazing time of 1:55.95—the fastest split from any
of the morning heats. He told me he was also going with Katie Ledecky—a given, since she was currently the best in the world at this event—and Leah Smith, a top collegiate freestyler who’d been part of the gold-medal US team in this event at the 2015 worlds, was also a clear-cut choice. That still left one spot, and I did the quick math in my head and thought for a moment it might fall to me, but he told me he’d decided to tap Maya Dirado, who was having the meet of her life, swimming absolutely incredibly. Maya didn’t even swim in this event at trials, and yet she’d already medaled in the 200 and 400 IM, so she was a strong freestyle swimmer. Frank Busch told me he wished things were different, but that this was the lineup he and his coaches thought gave us the best chance to win. Basically, he said all the right things. But they weren’t the things I wanted to hear.

  And I said all the right things in response. I thanked him for the opportunity to swim on the team, and then I continued with my warm-down, getting ready for the 200 back the next day, already praying for each of the girls on that relay, knowing that they were going to make me and the entire country very proud. Later, Maya Dirado sought me out after she’d been told of the coaches’ decision to give me a massive hug. She looked me straight in the eye and told me she was going to make me proud. I held her tight and looked right back at her and told her I had absolutely no doubt that she would—she already had!

  MOM: Missy sent me a text as soon as she was done with her warm-down. She wasn’t the only one counting out those spots. Schmitty, Katie, and Leah, that’s what we were all thinking, those three were a lock, but I had it in my head that the fourth spot might go to Missy, because of her second-place finish at trials and her second-fastest split in that morning’s preliminary heat. I wasn’t even thinking about Maya, although I probably should have been, because she was doing so well. But Missy’s text just said that she wouldn’t be swimming in the finals and that she was fine with it, so it’s not like we had the whole day to sit and worry about what the coaches would do. Instead, I could only sit and worry about how Missy was handling all of this. And I could only imagine that the other girls from that morning swim, Cierra Runge and Melanie Margalis, were texting their own mothers, telling them they wouldn’t be on the finals team, either, carrying their own disappointments. The agonizing piece for us, though, was that we couldn’t be there for Missy in any way. We were so separated from her during the games, there was just this little text exchange, when really the moment was so much bigger than that. It needed a hug or a cuddle or a good cry, but I guess this wasn’t the time for a hug or a cuddle or a good cry because Missy still had some work to do, getting ready for the 200 back. Dick and I, we had to be strong for her, so she could be strong.

  The timing for a lot of these finals was ridiculous. They were going off at eleven at night, sometimes midnight, sometimes even later. It gets to you, all those late nights, because the entire team is expected to be at the pool, cheering on their teammates. The only exception is if you were scheduled for a preliminary swim the next morning. In that case, the coaches wanted you back in the village, getting a good night’s sleep.

  A lot of nights, I’d duck outside our building in the village, where they had a two-lane twenty-five-meter pool. That was something they didn’t have in London, but it made a huge difference, just having this pool right there. It was the best! We would go and do our main swims in the morning, usually as a team, but if we wanted to hop in the water around eight or nine o’clock at night, to make sure our body was used to being awake and swimming at that hour, we didn’t have to get on a bus and trek across town to get the work in. We could just step outside and do a couple hundred meters and go straight back to our room. Early on, before my meet started to go really south, it was so much fun being in that pool, in that spectacular setting with my teammates, surrounded by these huge buildings in this beautiful city. But then there were some nights, like the night of the relay finals, when I was out there swimming by myself. Those moments, alone in the pool, all lit up against the dark sky, were so magical, so peaceful. I don’t think I felt any more connected to the sport during these Rio games than I did in those lonely moments in the pool, alone with my thoughts, alone in the water. Just me in my element, getting ready for my 200 back.

  Meanwhile, the relay finals went off as expected. The United States won, with Katie Ledecky swimming the anchor leg, which meant that despite my struggles at these games I’d earned another gold medal. The way it works in relays is that if you swim in the prelims and not in the finals, you still get a medal, but you don’t get to stand on the podium. Of course, it’s the four swimmers in the pool at the end who get all the glory, they’re the ones people remember, but the medals go to the entire team. And all those times when it was me on the podium, I felt strongly that my teammates who swam in the morning were just as deserving of the honor—and I still felt that way now that the situation was flipped, even though it was a new experience for me to be watching my teammates stand on the podium receiving their medals while I sat in my room by myself, watching it all on television. A gold medal is a gold medal, and I’m very proud of this one, but it has a different story attached to it, a different set of feelings.

  Anyway, a part of me was so relieved to be done with my freestyle events, and I allowed myself to think, Okay, I guess I’m a backstroker at this meet, here on in. Only that didn’t work out for me, either, because I failed to make it to the finals. That was hard, and so disappointing. To put in all that work to make it to these Olympics, to qualify by the grace of God in three events, and to fall short of the finals in all three. But the hardest thing I had to do in Rio was climb into my seat in the athlete stands for the finals of the 200 back, an event I’d won in London, with a world-record time. An event that was going on without me.

  I sat next to Cierra Runge, who was my roommate in Rio. We’d been at Cal together for a year, and we were incredibly close. We’d been on that morning relay team in the 4x200 free, and left to watch those finals from a distance, so we were struggling with a lot of the same emotions, the feeling of being on the outside looking in. And as the swimmers stepped to the blocks I turned to Cierra and said, “Can I just hold your hand during the race?”

  She said, “Of course. Whatever you need.”

  So I held her hand, and for the next two-plus minutes I didn’t feel so all alone, and together we cheered our heads off for Maya Dirado down there in the pool as she shocked the swimming world with a come-from-behind win over Katinka Hosszú of Hungary. It was such a thrilling win, and I couldn’t have been happier for Maya, who really was having the meet of her life. Seeing the pure joy in her eyes, the emotion of what she had just accomplished (and having it happen to just about the best person you’ll ever meet!), it almost helped me remember why I used to love the sport that was currently wreaking so much havoc in my life.

  At one point, in the middle of all that cheering, I noticed that I was crying. Just a couple of tears, but I couldn’t tell if they were tears of joy for Maya and the rest of my teammates, who were really having an insane Olympics, or tears of sadness or regret for the Olympics that might have been . . . for me.

  The great takeaway of those tears was that they pushed me to make a decision. I could either kick myself and wallow in self-pity, or I could find a way to grow from this Olympic experience, and to stand as a different kind of role model in defeat. It’s one thing to inspire all these little girls by winning a bunch of medals. That’s easy. But it’s another thing entirely to be an inspiration when things aren’t exactly going your way. I thought about this a lot, as the Rio games approached. I thought about how I’d been moving about the planet with all these great expectations—expectations I’d placed on myself, mostly, but ones that were also shared by the media, by my sponsors, by my fans. (By the publisher of this book, even!) Goodness, I had only to look at my mug smiling back at me, billboard-size, as I walked through the airport past a United Airlines terminal to see that I’d been cast as one
of the faces of these Olympic games, and even now I wanted to live up to that image, at least as much as I could. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to live up to it as an athlete, but it was still on me to do so as a person, so that’s what I was determined to do. I realized that if I wasn’t able to be the athlete I was projected to be, all I had left was to be the person I was projected to be, so I wiped away those tears and vowed to do just that. I would stand in support of my teammates. I would be gracious in defeat. I would answer every question thrown at me by reporters. I would make time for my fans, my sponsors. I would still be that person on those billboards, still be the face of these games, only I’d be coming at it from a different place.

  Everyone knows what it’s like to fail—and here I’d failed in front of billions of people. I’d let my teammates down. I’d let my country down. I’d let myself down, most of all. And yet through it all I kept reminding myself that everyone knows what it’s like to work hard for something and not get it. The real opportunity here was in showing the world what failure can look like, in a positive way. What it can mean to work hard for something and not get it and still look ahead to the next goal.

  To be an inspiration in disappointment—the phrase just kind of lit up in front of me. That would be my thing, coming out of these games. It wasn’t exactly the thing I’d set out for, but it was the thing at hand, and I would carry it proudly going forward.

  As my time in Brazil came to an end, I was still trying to figure out what had gone wrong for me. I was praying and praying, but God wasn’t with me just yet. That didn’t keep me from searching for some kind of sign from him, and I finally found one on the plane, coming home from Rio.