Rush for the Gold: Mystery at the Olympics (2 page)

Frank Busch, who was coaching the American women, told her she had to conserve her strength in the heats and the semifinals. “You’ll only need to go about 2:12 or 2:13 in the heats,” he said. “Anything under 2:10 should be enough in the semis. You’re going to have to swim the 200 fly three times in three days. I’m guessing you’ve never done that before.”

She’d done it twice in two days on occasion but never three times. Still, she knew she was in the best shape of her life. Ed had made her do a set of
five
200s on three minutes’ rest in practice before she’d left. It had hurt
—really
hurt—but she had felt okay, even after the last one. And sure enough, she cruised through the heats and the semifinals, qualifying fourth with a time of 2:09.12. She was amazed how easy that swim felt. Easy!

Liu Zige, the Chinese world record holder, had gone the fastest time in the semifinals: 2:05.99—well off her world record time of 2:01.81. She was in lane four. Teresa Crippen, the other American, had qualified second and was in lane five. And Susan Carol was next to her in lane six. Susan Carol planned to let Crippen pace her for the first
100 meters so she wouldn’t go out too fast. Crippen was too experienced to make that mistake.

Susan Carol followed that plan for fifty meters. But coming off the first wall, she could see she was already half a body length ahead of Crippen, and she had almost been holding back. She decided to just swim smoothly and not look around at all. She went into the routine she used in practice to try to keep her stroke steady:
Nice and easy
, she kept repeating with each two-stroke sequence.
Nice … and easy …

At the halfway point, she felt as if she was just starting the race and could go 200 more meters if need be. Crippen was nowhere in sight, but as Susan Carol turned, she glanced over two lanes and saw that she was dead even with Liu. A little bit of fear crept through her. Was her mind fooling her body? Had she gone out too fast?

She could hear the building getting very loud as she and Liu churned through the third length. That wasn’t surprising: Liu was a national hero in China. Sometimes, though, a swimmer can actually hear a tone to the crowd. There is a difference between cheering and pleading. Susan Carol thought the crowd’s tone sounded as if someone was threatening Liu. She knew she wouldn’t see Liu on her last turn because she would turn her head away from her not toward her.
That’s not important
, she told herself.
Holding your stroke and kicking hard for the last fifty is what’s important
.

When she came off that final wall, though, she got a shock: As she pulled out of the turn and started to take her first stroke, she saw Crippen go by her heading
toward
the
wall. That meant Susan Carol was at least ten meters ahead of her. Was something wrong with Crippen? Or was it possible that something was incredibly right with
her
?

Halfway home, she felt her arms start to tighten, but she still had energy left and she picked up her kick. She could now see the flags in front of her and the noise had become impossibly loud. Could she actually be in medal contention? Suddenly she was under the flags that marked five meters to go. She took one last breath, put her head down, and reached for the wall with her last bit of strength,
just
getting her fingertips on the timing pad without having to add an extra kick.

She surfaced in time to see that Liu was on the wall but others were just touching.
Did I finish second?
she wondered.
Could that be possible?
She heard shrieks from where the American team was sitting, and she pulled her goggles up and glanced over to see people jumping up and down and waving their arms. Becky Ausmus, who had made the team as a freestyle relay swimmer, was pointing at the scoreboard.

Susan Carol finally looked: She had gone 2:03.44. Liu had gone 2:03.46.

Crippen had actually rallied in the final length to finish third, way back at 2:05.85. Susan Carol couldn’t believe it.

She had WON the World Championship. The World Championship. Won. It.

Later she would find out that she had put up the second-fastest time any woman had
ever
gone in the history of US swimming.

Teresa Crippen had called it right then. She was leaning on the lane line, reaching to give Susan Carol a hug. “Do you realize what you’ve just done?” she said. “You’ve just become a star—a
big
star.”

Nine months later, sitting in her living room, Susan Carol could still hear Crippen’s voice. The question now was a little more complex: Just how big a star did she
want
to be?

S
tevie Thomas had watched the Shanghai race live on his computer. He had set his alarm for 7 a.m. because the race was scheduled to start at 9:15 p.m. and Philadelphia was fourteen hours behind Shanghai. He had felt a little chill run through him when he heard Dan Hicks introduce Susan Carol as “the fifteen-year-old American who has come from nowhere to be the fourth-seeded swimmer in this final.”

When Susan Carol was almost dead even with Liu at the 100-meter mark, Stevie felt more nervous than excited, worrying that she had gone out too fast. He hardly qualified as a swimming expert, but in the two and a half years he’d known Susan Carol, he’d learned enough to know that the 200 fly was a dangerous race. It was the only one in which even world-class swimmers might not finish if their arms went dead on the final few strokes.

“This is a surprise, isn’t it, Rowdy, to see young Anderson out there with Liu at the 100-meter mark?” Hicks had said.

“It is, Dan,” answered Rowdy Gaines, NBC’s swimming analyst. “You hope she hasn’t pushed herself too hard. Don’t forget Teresa Crippen, though; she’s probably the best closer in the pool.”

When Susan Carol and Liu were still dead even coming off the 150 wall, Stevie almost couldn’t watch. They had left the rest of the swimmers in their wake. And then they were down to the final strokes, and Hicks was screaming.

“It is STILL Anderson and Liu, stroke for stroke to the wall!” he shouted. “CAN ANDERSON PULL OFF A STUNNING UPSET?! YES, YES, SHE DID IT! SHE OUT-TOUCHED HER! SUSAN CAROL ANDERSON HAS PULLED OFF THE UPSET OF THE WORLD SWIMMING CHAMPIONSHIPS!”

“Unreal!” Gaines added. “She just beat her best time by five seconds!
Five seconds!
That’s impossible!”

Stevie was on his feet, dancing around his room, screaming at least as loudly as Hicks and Gaines. “SHE DID IT! SHE DID IT!”

His father popped open the door. He was already dressed for work at his law office downtown.

“What happened?” he demanded.

“Susan Carol WON, Dad, she won!” Stevie said.

His dad broke into a wide smile. “She WON? Are you kidding me? She won? She beat the Chinese girl?”

“Touched her out—two-hundredths of a second. Beat her own best time by
five
seconds.”

His dad shook his head. “Wow,” he said.

“Isn’t it amazing!?”

“Incredible! You know … I think your girlfriend is about to become famous. I mean
really
famous, not like a couple years ago on TV.”

Stevie hadn’t thought about that. He had been focused on Susan Carol’s stunning rise in the swimming world. He’d been writing about her success for the
Washington Herald
. In one story, he had quoted Bob Bowman, best known as Michael Phelps’s coach, as saying, “For a teenage girl to see a sudden drop in times isn’t that unusual. They can mature and get a lot stronger in a short period of time. This is another level, though. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite this dramatic.”

Still … “She was a pretty big star when we were doing the TV show, Dad,” he said. “I remember what it was like that year at the Super Bowl.…”

Bill Thomas was shaking his head. “Back then she had one little cable channel promoting her. Now she’ll have a bunch of big-time sponsors lining up.

“Think about it, Stevie. The Olympics are coming, she’s a great story, and she’s a very pretty girl—as I think you’ve noticed.”

His dad was right—Stevie knew it then and the next few months had proved it. Susan Carol sent him texts and
emails updating him:
Three Speedo guys at the house tonight. They want me in a commercial with Phelps
.… And:
Nike offering ridiculous money …
Not to mention:
Here’s my new cell and email. Had to change both. Agents won’t go away for five minutes. Same with my dad
.

So far, Don Anderson had turned them all away, not wanting his daughter to become a professional swimmer, which would mean—among other things—that she could no longer compete for her high school team or when she got to college. Of course, the money being offered would more than pay for Susan Carol’s college.…

Stevie didn’t know what to think. But he’d started scheming ways to get to cover the Olympics in London. He had made enough money working as a freelancer for the
Herald
that he could pay his own way there if the newspaper would get him credentialed. Bobby Kelleher, his friend and mentor at the paper, was convinced Matt Rennie, the
Herald
’s sports editor, would go for it. “Getting an extra reporter there, someone good, without paying expenses?” he said. “Book your flights now.”

That was back in March, when Stevie had spent most of his spring break covering the first and second rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament. It had been at the Final Four two years earlier that he and Susan Carol had met as winners of a writing contest. They had been skeptical about each other at the start. He was north; she was south. She loved Duke; he loved the Big Five; she was tall, he was … not. But they had discovered that they liked each
other a lot when they stumbled onto a plot to throw the National Championship and had to work together.

Now they were unofficially boyfriend and girlfriend. Unofficial because it was tough to see much of each other when boy lived in Philadelphia and girl lived in Goldsboro, North Carolina. They came together fairly often to cover big sporting events—he for the
Herald
, and she for the
Washington Post
. Technically that made them competitors, but somehow they always ended up working together on big stories.

Stevie had been thinking the Olympics would mean spending three weeks in London covering the games with Susan Carol. But if Susan Carol was there as an athlete, he wasn’t likely to see much of her.

And yet, how could he not be thrilled for her? He had known almost from their first meeting how important swimming was to her. He still remembered the first time he had actually seen her in the water. He had been awestruck then—and he still was.

Stevie knew that part of the reason Susan Carol was being offered so much money wasn’t really about her ability as an athlete: It had to do with her looks. Apparently attractive teenage girls were a marketer’s dream. A little research had clarified things further. Jennifer Capriati, a tennis player who had been ranked in the top ten in the world at the age of fourteen, had been a multimillionaire the day she turned pro. Michelle Wie, a golfer who turned pro at sixteen, was also an instant millionaire. Figure skating was
full
of teenage wonders who sold everything from automobiles to watches.

And teenage swimming phenoms were certainly nothing new. Amanda Beard had become a star at the Atlanta Olympics, where she carried a teddy bear with her to the blocks for good luck. By the time the next Olympics rolled around, she was a big-time model. Natalie Coughlin had won her first Olympic gold medal in Athens in 2004, and she’d also become a star. She had been hired by MSNBC as a Winter Olympics co-host in 2010 and had been on the ultimate look-at-me TV show,
Dancing with the Stars
.

You didn’t have to be biased about Susan Carol to know she had the looks marketers would love. People always thought she was older than she actually was because she was tall. She was at least six feet (Stevie was convinced she was an inch taller but wouldn’t admit it). Stevie was still hoping to catch up with her, but at five-nine, he hadn’t gotten there yet. Kindly, she never wore heels when they were together.

Susan Carol had long dark hair, a smile that could light up a dungeon (Stevie called it The Smile) and was—obviously—in great shape. She was smart and sharp and yet full of southern charm. Stevie was sure she could charm a Red Sox fan into rooting for the Yankees if she really put her mind to it.

For a long time after they first began “dating,” Stevie had wondered what someone like Susan Carol saw in him. He guessed he was good-looking enough—although not in
her class. But he was no athlete, though he loved sports and worked hard at it. He was maybe the fifth-best player on his basketball team—the junior varsity team. He was a reasonably good golfer but had never made the finals in the junior club championships.

No, he had found his best success as a sports reporter. He knew and loved sports and had, as the old saying went, a nose for news. That much he and Susan Carol had in common. And working together brought out the best in both of them. They spurred each other on and could spend many hours talking sports. Plus, she seemed to think he was funny. “Never underestimate the importance of being funny,” his dad had once told him. “I never would have had a second date with your mother if she didn’t think I was funny.”

Stevie and his father shared the same acerbic sense of humor. But Stevie had never been sure why that had impressed his mother. She was, without doubt, the serious one in the family.

Still, for whatever unlikely combination of reasons, Susan Carol had chosen him. And Stevie had chosen her right back.

Now, on a Friday afternoon in April, as he sat watching the second round of the Masters golf tournament, his mom came into the living room, holding out the telephone.

Most of the time Stevie and Susan Carol communicated by video-chatting or texting when Stevie was at home, since his cell phone signal in the house stunk.

“You aren’t online,” she said as soon as he said hello.

“I’m downstairs watching the Masters,” he said. “Did you have your meeting with Lightning Fast?”