Chapter 21

Kick, stroke, kick, stroke breathe.

Kick, stroke, kick, stroke breathe.

I tumbled into the last turn. Three laps down, and only one remaining. This should feel harder, I thought. My muscles felt fine. A little warm but that was to be expected after a hundred-fifty metres of butterfly. I knew I was overdosing on adrenalin.

Who wouldn’t be high after posting a personal best to within a second of the Olympic record for the fifty freestyle? That performance in the final guaranteed me a slot on the national team. I was going to the Games! It took every single ounce of my self-control to pull it together for the butterfly final.

I was the second slowest qualifier for the two-hundred butterfly. Once I knew I was in the final for the fifty freestyle I hadn’t wanted to waste any extra energy that I could otherwise take with me.

But now I was on the final lap of the butterfly final, and I felt like I could have gone another three.

Fuck it.

As I rotated out of the turn, I rocketed off the timing board under the blocks. My body crested out of the water, and I threw my arms out, up, and over, curving my hands to slice down into the water. I shimmied my body like a mermaid, my knees and ankles locked together as I dolphin-kicked, flexing my fingers slightly to cup as much water as I could to leverage my body out of the water again. I knew that I would have less than two-thirds of the pool left to swim after coming out of the turn that powerfully, so I switched up to my ‘berserker’ cadence.

One of our conditioning coaches had come up with this completely ludicrous activity with the cable machines. He would load up the two independent pulleys with a third of your body weight and run a digital metronome. Depending on what stroke you were working on, you’d stand up or sit on a bench so you could keep the range of movement that matched your stroke. You’d stroke to the metronome as you would keep your cadence in the pool. But as you went on, he’d gradually ratchet up the metronome until you were going past your normal swim cadence. The weight wasn’t much, but the pacing made it ridiculous. More than once you’d be in the gym, listening to the digital ticker gradually speeding up in concert with the spin of the pulley wheels, then suddenly hear the weights crash down as a poor squad mate released the handles, followed by releasing their lunch into a bucket. But it certainly showed you something new to try in the pool. I can’t remember who came up with the ‘berserker’ name, but it stuck, and now people used it to refer to their last-ditch-leave-nothing-on-the-table burst.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the alternating blue and white of the lane ropes change to solid red. I bucked my legs powerfully one last time to slam my hands into the wall. Momentum carried the rest of my body forward, and I swung my arms up to grab the handles under the starter block as I hugged the wall to catch my breath.

I could hear my blood rushing as my heart pounded. I shook my head to clear the water from my ears, but the sound didn’t go away. I turned to look back across the pool in time to see the first of the other swimmers hit the wall.

Wait.

What?

I pushed my goggles back up onto my forehead and wiped the water from around my eyes. I squinted at the super screen at the far end of the aquatic centre.

Lane 3 Connor, J 1:54:60

And blinking next to the time were the letters WR.

A world record?

The roaring didn’t go away. It was the crowd in the stands cheering for me and for a new world record in the two-hundred butterfly.

“Connor! Lane 3!”

I looked around, then up. The block official for my lane was smiling at me.

“Congratulations, son. But you’ll need to celebrate out of the pool. We still have a few more events to run tonight.”

“Oh. Sorry,” I stuttered.

“All good. Congratulations again. Good luck in Hamburg.”

I made my way to the side of the pool and climbed out. Our conditioning coach was waiting there, and he threw his arm across my shoulders.

“Berserker, huh?” he grinned.

“I’ll never complain again about those pulleys again,” I grinned back.

If you ever studied ancient history or studied classical paintings, you may have come across references to the Bacchanalia of Rome; debauched festivals in honour of the god of wine, freedom, intoxication, and ecstasy. Those are pretty good parameters for what it looks like when elite athletes let their hair down.

We don’t get to do it very often, so when we can it’s like filling up the hump in a debauchery camel. When you eat clean and live pure for three hundred and sixty days a year, an officially sanctioned opportunity to go off the rails is like receiving a golden ticket to the chocolate factory. Add in that a number of those recipients have an honest shot at Olympic gold, and you can imagine why the first thing that happened when we arrived at our hotel was a team debrief in our third-floor meeting room.

“Outstanding,” Coach Lawson began. “I know you’ve all been hearing the cheers and applause over the last four hours by the pool, but every single person in this room knows how hard every other person here has been working. None of you failed out there this week. I want you to blow out these windows letting each other know how proud you are of each of your teammates.”

The room was filled with ear-shattering whistles and cheers. My roommate Dave, who’d taken out first place in the 1500m with a healthy four seconds ahead of the qualifying minimum, ran a lap of the room high fiving anyone who’d reciprocate, prompting laughter. After a few minutes, the cheering died down and Lawson began to speak again.