Breaking the Surface (2 page)

To take off from the board, I reached up with my arms and pushed off with my legs at the same time, allowing the board to kick me into the air. As I pulled my shoulders back a bit and pushed my hips up and out, I could feel right away that my weight was back in the direction of the board, which meant I was going to be close. When that happens, you worry about hitting your hands on the board, so my concern as I went through the dive was to get my hands out of the way.

Ron O’Brien, my coach, was standing at the side of the pool farthest from the board. From the moment I pushed off, he later said, he could feel in his stomach that I was going to hit, but he didn’t know whether I was going to tick my head, hit my head, tick my hand, or break my hand. He said he hoped I was going to slide by the board like I’d done in the past when I was close. I’m usually able to make split-second adjustments to get out of the way of the board when I know I’m going to be close.

So, as I brought my legs up into the pike position to initiate the somersault, I exhaled and held my breath. Spinning through the somersaults, I saw the water once, then a second time, and then I came out of the pike position with my arms wide so I wouldn’t hit my hands on the board. I thought I’d cleared it, but I heard this big hollow thud and felt myself landing in the water in a really strange way.

I was underwater before I realized that I’d hit my head. Once I did, the first emotion I felt was embarrassment; this was the Olympics, I was a gold medalist, and here I’d gone and hit my damn head on the board. I’d had accidents before, but never at the Olympics.

While I was still underwater, I tried to figure out how to get out of the pool without anybody seeing me. I guess I was in shock. Ron ran to the side of the pool where the diving board was, watching to see if I was coming up. If I wasn’t coming up, he was going in after me. Ron’s wife, Mary Jane, was up in the stands holding her breath. She knew better than most people how bad that thud could be. She also knew that a springboard is pretty forgiving compared to a ten-meter platform. Nine years before, I’d hit my head on a platform in Tbilisi, in the former Soviet Union, and was knocked out for twenty minutes. They had to pull me out of the water. I had a concussion and had to drop out of the competition, but I was lucky I wasn’t killed.

So there I was underwater in Seoul, humiliated. I couldn’t stay under there forever, so I came up and started swimming to the side of the pool. Looking out into the crowd and at the people standing on the deck, I could tell that everyone was shocked and concerned. They could probably tell that I was upset, too. My first reaction was to get angry with myself for hitting the board—my first reaction is always to get angry with myself. But the anger passed quickly, because I was terrified about something that I’m sure never crossed the mind of anyone in that hall.

As I swam toward the side of the pool, all kinds of thoughts raced through my head: What if I cut my scalp? What if I’m bleeding? Is there blood in the pool? What happens if I get blood on someone? In normal circumstances that wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but these were anything but normal circumstances. I was in a total panic that I might cause someone else harm. It was sheer terror. I didn’t even pause to think that I might be badly injured. But whatever was going through my mind, I had to get out of the pool.

As I climbed onto the deck, I felt around my scalp to see if I was bleeding. Ron was coming toward me, but before he got to me, one of the other coaches, Jan Snick, started digging through my hair to see if I had a cut. I held up my hand to get him to back off and to keep everyone else away. I was angry at Jan for trying to help, but he wasn’t doing anything unusual. He just didn’t know that he was dealing with HIV. I didn’t want anyone to touch me—except Ron, who knew the whole story.

Several months before, I’d finally gotten my courage up to go for an HIV test. My lover of six years had already been diagnosed with AIDS; it wasn’t surprising that I was HIV-positive. But hitting my head on the diving board was a complete shock. I know it must seem irresponsible now, but I hadn’t considered the possibility that I could injure myself in that way. Since my diagnosis, I’d focused entirely on my training for the Olympics and was in almost complete denial about my HIV status. Now, having hit my head, there was no denying the terrifying truth.

Ron got to me, and he put his arm around me and walked me out of the pool area toward a waiting room just beyond the pool. He asked me how I felt, if I was okay, trying to see if I was alert or not. I told him how embarrassed I was, and then, just as we were walking past where most of the divers and coaches were sitting in the stands, Ron saw a trickle of blood coming down the back of my neck. He used his hand to push it back up under my hairline and out of sight. Ron didn’t want anyone to see it because he thought it would upset people even more if they saw I was bleeding. But there was also another reason: the Chinese divers and coaches, who were very competitive with me, were standing right there, and he was sure they were thinking, “Here’s our chance now.” Ron always wanted the Chinese to think I had ice water in my veins.

We got to the waiting room and the team doctor, Jim Puffer, met us there. I sat down on the edge of a massage table, and Dr. Puffer started digging around, trying to find the wound.

So many things went through my mind. One stream of thought was: Did I get any blood in the pool? Is the filtration system working? Did they allow ample time before the next diver dove? Did any blood spill on the pool deck? Could I have infected Ron? Then I worried about Dr. Puffer, who wasn’t wearing gloves. Was I putting Dr. Puffer in danger?

I was too panicked in that moment to think clearly, but eventually I had a chance to think it through, and then later I talked with Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the nation’s foremost experts on HIV and AIDS. Dr. Fauci explained: “Even if you started bleeding before you got out of the pool, there would have been an extraordinarily low risk of infecting anyone who used the pool following your accident. There are two reasons for this. First, there’s the profound dilutional effect— at most, there may have been a minuscule amount of blood in a pool filled with tens of thousands of gallons of water. Second, the chlorine in the pool would have killed the virus.” I was relieved to learn that I hadn’t put any of the other divers at risk.

The only people who were at any risk, it turns out, were those who came in direct contact with my blood, and according to Dr. Fauci, the risk was extremely small. He explained: “Even if Dr. Puffer had a syringe that contained some of your blood and accidentally injected himself beneath the skin, there would still only be a 0.3 percent chance of infection. In this case, Dr. Puffer was not using a syringe, but a [solid] needle, to stitch the wound, so if he had punctured his own skin, the risk would have been much lower than 0.3 percent. As far as Ron O’Brien and Dr. Puffer both coming in direct contact with your blood, the risk was also extremely low, but how low depends on a number of factors. If they got the blood on intact skin—in other words, they had no abrasions or cuts on their hands—then the risk was very, very low. In fact, there are no well-documented cases existing of somebody becoming infected from having HIV-infected blood splashed on intact skin. If there were an abrasion or a nick or a cut, that would increase the risk, but it would still be a small risk.” Since 1988, both Ron and Dr. Puffer have been tested for HIV and both are negative.

Before we left for the ’88 Olympics I had debated telling Dr. Puffer about my HIV status. I realize that it was irresponsible for me not to inform him, but I didn’t want him to have the burden of keeping such a difficult secret. We knew a lot of the same people, and I was afraid it might put him in a position to have to lie to somebody. I had entrusted only a handful of people with that information—Ron, my coach, and Tom, my lover, were the only two people at the Olympics who knew. And now I wanted to warn Dr. Puffer, but I was paralyzed.

Ron was standing beside the table where I was sitting, and I looked at him, and I broke down. I wanted to say something about the HIV, but all I could do was cry. Everything was all so mixed up at that point: the HIV, the shock and embarrassment of hitting my head, and an awful feeling that it was all over. The Olympics, I thought, were over for me.

Ron held me as I cried and said, “Greg, you have a wonderful career to look back on. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to do anything. No matter what you decide, I’m behind you a hundred percent.” Between sobs, I managed to say, “I got halves and zeros on that dive. I can’t still be in the contest.”

Ron knew I wasn’t out of the running, and he was just trying to figure out if I was physically and emotionally up to going on. Actually, I had a strong enough lead when I hit the board to make it into the finals as long as I did reasonably well on the last two dives. Ron went out to check my standings and came back with the news that I was in fifth place. The top twelve divers make the finals. So it wasn’t over as long as I had the strength to compete. Ron asked me what I wanted to do.

It was easier for me to focus on diving than it was to think about the possibility of having put Dr. Puffer in danger of contracting HIV. Diving had always been my refuge, and once again it gave me something to focus on in a moment of crisis. It was my way of escaping, just as it had always been.

Once I knew I was still in the running, I never considered giving up. I thought about my friend Ryan White, the teenager from Indiana who had become a national spokesman on the AIDS epidemic. I knew Ryan would never give up, and that gave me the extra push I needed. So I said to Ron, “We’ve worked too long and hard to get here. I’m not going to give up now.” Ron checked his watch. We had about twelve minutes until I had to do the next dive. He asked Dr. Puffer how many stitches it would take to close the gash in my scalp. Dr. Puffer said it would take three or four, and Ron told him to get going. There was no time for anesthetic, so they put me facedown on the table and Dr. Puffer sewed up my scalp and put on a waterproof patch. By then, we had six or seven minutes to go.

Lots of people were standing around the room, and Ron thought we should go for a little walk before I went back for my next dive. We went out the door and walked down a long hallway to the fifty-meter pool that was used for water polo practice. No one was there. Ron told me to jump in the water, to get moving again and get my energy back up. I got in for a minute and got out.

On our way back to the main pool, Ron reminded me that what had happened was a fluke, that I should forget about it. We talked about what I had to do next: get back up on that board and do my last two dives, which were even more difficult than the one I’d just done.

The next dive, the tenth, was a reverse one-and-a-half with three and a half twists, and the final dive, the eleventh, was a reverse three-and-a-half tuck. They’re both tough dives, and they’re also executed by turning in the same direction as the dive that cost me the four stitches in my scalp. To reassure me, Ron said, “Well, hockey players get hit in the face with a puck and get fifty stitches and then come out and play the rest of the game. You only have four stitches, and you only have to do two dives.” We both laughed. Neither of us mentioned the HIV.

As I went to the ladder to get back on the board, Ron said, “Greg, you’ve done this a thousand times in practice. Just do it like you do it.”

I knew I had to jump it out, put a little more space between me and the diving board. It was never my nature to play it safe, to hold back. You don’t win gold medals by playing it safe. My instinct was to stand it up, stay close to the board, so I was fighting with myself. I had to turn my head off, or I wasn’t going to be able to do it. Ron’s “just do it like you do it” helped me stop obsessing over what I was about to do and how I should do it.

I walked over to the base of the ladder and waited for the diver before me to go. I probably wasn’t there more than half a minute, but that’s always a dangerous time. You’re out there all by yourself, with thousands of people in the stands watching, and if your confidence goes, you’re in trouble. As I waited to get on the board, I kept repeating to myself, “Breathe, relax,” which was how I got focused.

When the diver ahead of me left the board, I climbed the ladder. I walked out on the board and set the fulcrum. Then I tossed my chamois down onto the deck. Your chamois is essential equipment, like your bathing suit. It’s a rectangular, absorbent cloth about the size of a large napkin, and you use it to dry yourself after each dive. My chamois was also sort of a security blanket, and I was never without it at a diving meet.

As I stood on the board shaking out my legs and arms, they announced my name. To my complete surprise, there was thunderous applause. Then, when they announced the dive, it got eerily quiet. You could feel the tension in the hall, and I was already terrified. I still hadn’t figured out what I’d done wrong in the last dive, and here I was about to do a dive that again would put my head within inches of the board. I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of all those people. Millions of people around the world were watching on television. And what if I hit the board again?

In preparation for the dive, I rubbed my right hand through the back of my wet hair to get some water on it. Then I rubbed my hands together to get them equally damp—that was one of my diving rituals—and for a moment I stood there trying to get focused. Then I took a really deep breath and patted my chest so that everyone in the hall could see that my heart felt like it was pounding outside my chest. Then I smiled, and everybody started laughing, and I laughed along with them. The tension broke when they saw that I was more nervous and scared than they were. Their laughter helped me relax. It also made me realize how much support I had. I realized that the audience wanted me to do a good dive.

Once everyone quieted down, I went through the dive one more time in my mind. Then I just did it. I approached the end of the board, propelled myself into the air, executed the dive, and broke the surface of the water.