An Olympic Swimmer and Lessons for Us All
He was 6’3” tall when he stood on the starting
block at the pool. His face was so
youthful, so smooth, so handsome that he could have been a teen-age vampire
heartthrob in the Twilight movies. It
was July 19, 1922. In front of him
stretched 50 meters of calm blue water and a record that no one thought could
be broken. The “block” was not the
raised platform that we see today, Peter Johann would dive from the edge of the
pool into his lane. He wore a V-neck
sleeveless t-shirt and mid-thigh shorts, none of which interrupted the picture
of a lithe muscular athlete. The starter
called for the swimmers to take their mark. Peter crouched at pool’s edge, staring down
the lane. In the old style the starter
told the swimmers to “set” and their arms swing back, ready to propel themselves
forward when the gun fires.
Bang!
Peter
hurls himself into the water. He is tall
and strong, he slices the water easily and kicks himself into a high strong
stroke. What we now call the freestyle,
Peter would have known as the Australian crawl.
It is a power stroke with no “glide.”
You use the crawl to cover distance and cover it fast. To watch Peter move through the water is
watch a human machine. Arms churn, legs
kick, his head is down, breathing on every other stroke, always to the same
side with his face raised only enough to gain oxygen but not enough to impede
forward movement. Peter Johann hits the
wall and turns (no time saving flip turn here, that won’t be devised until the
1950’s) and heads for the final 50 meters.
Ahead of him lies only a stop watch.
There is no strategy in the 100 meters, just speed.
On
July 19, 1922 no man had ever swum the 100 meters in less than a minute. Some said it could not be done, but that was
before Peter Johann hit the wall in a time of 58.2 seconds. He would go on to break his own record two
more times at the 1924 Paris Olympics and the 1928 Amsterdam Games. His record of 51.0 seconds for the freestyle
stood for 17 years. [Now with 21st
century technology and training, the record hovers are 46 seconds.]
Peter Johann, had
been sickly as a child and had started swimming on the advice of the family doctor. He swam for the United States of America but
he had not been born here. At the age of
three years, he had immigrated with his family from what is now Romania. Living in poverty, training at the local YMCA
he would go on to become one of the best swimmers in the world for his or any
other age. He dropped his first name of
Peter, changed his middle name from Johan to Johnny and became known to the
world as Johnny Weissmuller.
People who only know
Weissmuller as Tarzan don’t know 90%
of what makes this man a legend. They
don’t know the effort, the discipline, the fight against the odds that make the
sum total of Johnny Weissmuller. But I
suspect that is true of all the Olympians we watch—both the A-list swimmers
that train in space age camps, and those from the smaller, poorer countries who
get by the best they can and still make it to the Olympics.
When it comes to the
Olympic Games I don’t differentiate gold, silver or bronze. When you are competing with the world’s best
athletes, and the difference between rankings is measured in one one-thousandth
of a second, or tenths of an inch, or hundredths of a point, any medal is a
remarkable achievement. Just being there is an accomplishment. It is the doing that counts, not the
winning. Remember that when you go out
for your morning run, your evening walk, your living room weight-lifting.
Life is not a
spectator sport. Keep the faith
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