Rush for the Gold: Mystery at the Olympics (16 page)

“Do you get used to it?” he asked Bobby Kelleher, who had covered fourteen Wimbledons and had spent a good deal of time in Great Britain.

“No,” Kelleher answered. “Every instinct you have driving a car or even crossing a street is wrong when you’re here. You have to stop and think about it all the time.”

Most of the media were staying in rooms set aside by the International Olympic Committee, which, according to Bobby, were little more than glorified dorm rooms.

“The media isn’t exactly the IOC’s main priority, so the
accommodations are usually lousy,” Kelleher had said. “If it’s a night or two, no big deal, but when you’re going to be someplace for a couple weeks, it makes a difference.”

Kelleher always stayed at the Gloucester when he covered Wimbledon and had become friends with the general manager over the years. He’d made arrangements a long time ago for him and Tamara to stay there during the Olympics. And when Stevie had been added to the traveling party, he had been able to get bumped to a junior suite, meaning Stevie would be sleeping on a pullout couch in a sitting room—which was fine with him. He was just excited to be here.

“Once we get to the hotel, we’ll take the subway to Olympic Park every day,” Kelleher had explained. “The Gloucester is a block from the Gloucester Road underground station. That’s what’s great about it—location. It’s right in Kensington: lots of restaurants, not too far from Harrods, where we’ll have to shop at some point so you can tell people you were there, and, most important for you, twenty-four-hour room service.”

That sounded perfect to Stevie.

The first thing he wanted to do when they got to the hotel was eat. The plane had left New York just after 10 a.m., and with the five-hour time change they had landed at Heathrow at a few minutes before 10 p.m. It had been close to 11 by the time they had wended their way through customs, gotten their luggage, and found the taxi line—or, as Kelleher explained, the taxi queue. “In London there are
no lines,” he said. “But there are plenty of queues.” By the time they pulled up to the Gloucester, Stevie was starved.

He knew he would have to wait until morning to call Susan Carol. She had flown over with the rest of the American swim team a week earlier, on July 18. The opening ceremony was now just two days away, and Susan Carol would swim her first race—a 100-butterfly heat—the day after that.

There had been many scuffles with her dad and the Lightning Fast people since the trials, and many desperate emails and texts and phone calls as she vented her frustrations. The latest drama was about whether she should take part in the opening ceremony.

They don’t want me to do it
, she had written.
Apparently you have to be on your feet for quite a while waiting to march in and they’re nervous about that. A lot of people who are swimming on Saturday aren’t going to go, so they aren’t being completely crazy. But who knows if I’ll ever be on an Olympic team again? How could I possibly miss it?

Ed is okay with it. He checked, and apparently while you’re waiting, they have seating areas reserved for athletes who have to compete the next day so you don’t have to stand for too long. And really, I don’t have to swim all that fast to make the semis
.

The best news of all had come earlier: The Joe Berger-as-coach experiment had ended before it even began. After Susan Carol’s incredible swim in the 200 fly in Omaha (and after her refusal to be coached by anyone else), Don Anderson had decided to stick with Ed Brennan. Plus, he
had asked J. P. Scott directly if he did in fact, represent Joe Berger.

Turns out Ed had that one exactly right
, Susan Carol had written.
And the best part is that I think the whole incident finally made my dad step back and take a fresh look at J.P
.

Shortly before boarding the plane in New York, Stevie had gotten a text from Susan Carol saying she had also won the opening ceremony battle. After receiving assurances from the US coaches that she wouldn’t have to stand for too long, Reverend Anderson had sided with her against the Lightning Fast folks.

“Maybe her dad is coming around,” Stevie said, showing Kelleher the text while they were boarding. “This makes two wins in a row for the good guys.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” said Kelleher, always the last skeptic standing. “We’ll know more after she swims the 100. Sarah Sjöström is looking really strong. I think she’s got the edge over Susan Carol in that race. So let’s see how they react if she gets beaten.”

“What if she does win?”

“Well, then the pressure’s off. Or on. If she wins, Susan Carol will officially be the It Girl of the Games.”

Kelleher was right. She was already a huge headliner star of the games. She seemed to be in every pre-Olympic profile show or article or photo spread. Stevie had her on Google alerts for a while but finally turned it off. There were several fan sites dedicated to her, and Stevie had had his fill of reading about all the boys (and men) who were in love with Susan Carol. He knew jealousy was pointless.
And Susan Carol had proven in the past that she wasn’t wowed by looks or money or star athletes.

Still …

He was off in Stevie-world getting ready to fight off … well … everyone for Susan Carol’s affections when they pulled up to the hotel. Before he was even out of the cab, the doorman was hugging Tamara like a long-lost relative.

“Bonus for us this summer, having you two back again,” he was saying to Tamara and Bobby. “Feels like you were here for Wimbledon last week.”

“Well, it was only three weeks ago,” Kelleher said. “So you aren’t far off. Edward, meet our friend and colleague Steve Thomas.”

“Pleasure, Mr. Thomas,” Edward said.

He turned to Tamara, smiling. “I presume this is the young man you’ve told me about who is a young Bobby Kelleher.”

“He’s a lot better than that,” Bobby said with a laugh.

“But his partner won’t be working this fortnight, will she?” Edward said. “Be a bit busy in the pool.”

“That’s right,” Stevie said. “You’re well informed.”

“Well, she’s made quite a splash here, if you’ll forgive the pun. Pretty girl, that,” Edward said. He clapped Stevie on the shoulder. “I’d keep a close eye if I were you.”

“He does, Edward,” Kelleher said. “He does.”

They made their way into the lobby.

“What about our bags?” Stevie asked as they walked to the front desk.

“Edward will take care of them,” Kelleher said.

“But he didn’t give you a ticket or …”

“Stevie, Bobby is the mayor of the Gloucester,” Tamara said. “Don’t worry about it.

The rest of the check-in confirmed that. It seemed as if everyone who worked in the hotel came out to greet them. Much to Stevie’s relief, they headed straight to the hotel restaurant once they had their key cards. There, the night manager simply told them to order whatever they wanted, regardless of what was on the late-night menu.

After they’d eaten, everything seemed better still. Kelleher leaned back in his chair with a smile. “I love the morning flight,” he said. “Means we can get a good night’s sleep and be ready to go in the morning instead of walking around like jet-lagged zombies.”

“But what are we going to do?” Stevie said. “The opening ceremony isn’t until Friday night and there’s nothing important going on until Sunday.”

Tamara and Bobby both laughed.

“First trip to London and he’s bored already,” Tamara said.

“In the morning we’ll pick up our credentials,” Bobby said. “That will kill half the day. Then we have to find the media center and figure out the lay of the land. And then we have to fill out all the paperwork so we can get into the athletes’ village. That’ll kill the rest of the day. Friday, if we’re lucky, we’ll get to do some sightseeing.”

“Half a day to pick up credentials?” Stevie said.

“If we’re lucky,” Bobby said. “If you think security was
tight at the Final Four or the Super Bowl, think again. This is a whole new world.”

Susan Carol already knew what Bobby was talking about. She had arrived in London ten days before the opening ceremony, flying on a charter that included all forty-nine American swimmers plus the men’s and women’s water polo teams. Coaches and officials quickly filled the plane to capacity.

As luck would have it, Susan Carol was seated next to Elizabeth Wentworth. Or maybe it wasn’t luck. Apparently USA Swimming thought it was a good idea for swimmers who swam the same stroke to get to know one another better.

Elizabeth Wentworth wasn’t anything like Susan Carol had expected. In their brief encounters at the trials, she had seemed like a nice girl. And she’d been genuinely excited about Susan Carol’s record-breaking time in the 200 fly. But when they started talking on the long flight across the Atlantic, Susan Carol found herself thinking that her problems with her dad and her agents were pretty minor.

Elizabeth had grown up just outside Pensacola, Florida. She was the youngest of her parents’ four children and her dad had left when she was five. To this day she had no idea what had caused her parents to split, but her older siblings had told her that her father’s drinking had been a major issue.

Left alone with four kids ranging in age from eleven to five, Elizabeth’s mom had often worked two jobs: one at
Walmart and another one on weekends and sometimes at night manning the front desk at the local YMCA. That was where Elizabeth started swimming. Her mom had enrolled her in swimming classes so Elizabeth didn’t have to sit around the day-care center while she was working.

“I was always the biggest kid in my class,” Elizabeth said. “Not just tall, but big.” She shrugged. “The Y coach took one look at my shoulders and said, ‘You’re a butterflyer.’ ” She smiled. “Why’d they make you a butterflyer?”

“Because I was tall like you,” Susan Carol said. “And I’m pigeon-toed. I always had the kick.”

Elizabeth began winning meets when she was six, easily swimming twenty-five meters of butterfly when other kids her age couldn’t swim the length of the pool yet. By age eight she was nationally ranked, and at ten she was being recruited for top age-group teams around the state.

“Even though home wasn’t the greatest place in the world, my mom didn’t want me to leave,” she said. “It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that she sent me to Orlando to swim with Mike Schulte. That was when I really started to get good. But even though it’s nice there, I do get homesick.”

“Where do you live?”

“With Mike and his family. It’s okay, but I have to share a room with two of his daughters and sleep on the top bunk.”

She laughed. “Of course, I’m up at 4:30 to work out every morning, so it isn’t as if I get to sleep that much anyway.”

The two girls talked for at least half of the trip before falling asleep. Once they had arrived at the hotel north of London where they were going to stay until they moved into the athletes’ village, Susan Carol sent Stevie an email detailing Elizabeth Wentworth’s story.

She’s the best story on the team
, she wrote.
You should write something on her as soon as you get here. I feel terrible—she’s so nice, and incredibly talented, but she’s not that pretty, and it seems like that’s why no one’s really paying attention to her. It’s so not fair! I’d almost like to see her win more than me
.

Stevie had written back and said,
You’re kidding about wanting her to win, right?

Susan Carol thought a long time before she answered.
Honestly
, she wrote,
I’m not sure
.

The team had spent a week at a hotel outside London, getting bused to a nearby health club that had apparently just built a fifty-meter pool for workouts. The Chinese and the Russian teams were using the facility too because there weren’t many fifty-meter pools in the London area.

Susan Carol knew enough from her history classes to realize that even just twenty years ago, the thought of American and Chinese and Russian athletes sharing a practice facility would have been impossible.

The schedule was the same each day: The Chinese team had the pool at seven and again at three. The Americans had it at 8:30 and 4:30, and the Russians had it at ten and six. The workouts were hardly taxing. Everyone was tapering heavily. There were times in the middle of winter when
Susan Carol would swim 12,000 meters a day. Now, in a long-course pool, she was barely cracking 3,000.

There were all sorts of team meetings, but the silliest by far was when the ever-annoying Trevor James from USA Swimming was brought in one evening to go through the rules with them. How could they have come this far without knowing the rules? The butterflyers and breaststrokers knew they had to touch every wall with two hands and that their hands had to be parallel to one another. The backstrokers knew they were allowed one stroke on their stomach before flipping. Everyone knew they couldn’t kick underwater for more than fifteen meters.

But James went over the rules so thoroughly, and so officiously, that for several days the swimmers had mimicked him during practice. “If you allow a hand to drop making a two-handed turn, you
will
be disqualified!” … “Ooooh, looked like you were trying to beat the starter there. Wait until you hear the beep before moving. Don’t think you can outsmart the officials!” … “That was more than fifteen meters underwater—clearly you are a fish and must be disqualified!” In an odd way it helped bring the team together. They were all so focused and keyed up, it felt good to laugh.

It was on Monday, four days before the opening ceremony and two days before they were all scheduled to move to the athletes’ village in London, that Susan Carol met Liu Zige, the Chinese world-record holder she’d just touched out to win the World Championship. They hadn’t spoken
in Shanghai beyond nodding at one another before climbing onto the blocks.

Susan Carol was standing off to the side of the pool stretching with Elizabeth Wentworth when she saw Liu climb out of the pool. She had noticed her on other mornings, but protocol seemed to dictate that the swimmers not speak to one another as one team exited the pool and the other entered it. Now, though, Liu was walking directly toward them.