Golden Girl by Michael Silver

Author:Michael Silver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rodale
Published: 2014-06-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

SHARKS AND MINNOWS

In January 2004, most Cal students were either chilling at their parents’ pads or shredding at Lake Tahoe’s ski resorts. But when you’re a member of a big-time collegiate swim team, one of the perks of your existence—a sort of compensation for the many hours spent toiling in practice—is the annual training trip before the start of the winter break. The trip’s purpose is twofold: to prepare for the most important portion of the NCAA season and to facilitate team bonding. The locations vary, though the goal, for the most part, is to go someplace warm.

This year, McKeever had planned a doozy. The Golden Bears would fly to Sydney, Australia, in the heart of the Aussie summer, and sharpen their skills in a swimming-obsessed country. Largely because of Coughlin’s notoriety, the Bears would get to hobnob with 2000 Olympic hero Ian Thorpe, a cross between Elvis Presley and Michael Jordan in his country, as well as 1972 multi-champion Shane Gould, her country’s version of Mark Spitz. There was an ancillary benefit, of course, to meeting with Gould—her boyfriend, Milt Nelms, would be there, too.

When the Bears’ long flight touched down at Sydney Airport, Nelms and Gould were there to greet them. When the stroke consultant saw Coughlin disembark, he was startled by her appearance. “I was shocked when she came off the plane,” he says. “She always looks so vibrant, electric, and springy, but this time she looked like crap. She was kind of wan, soft looking, and exhausted. I knew she wasn’t right.”

Over the next 9 days, McKeever allowed Coughlin to spend her mornings with Nelms in an adjacent pool while she and Hite put the rest of the team through its typical workout. It was a boon to Coughlin’s mindset and pre-Olympic preparation—the most extended stretch of quality time she’d had with Nelms. Other than McKeever, Nelms was the only person Coughlin trusted to assess her technique, and even with the Games closing in, she was open to trying new things. “Teri had her do a lot of aggressive downtime, and we got to spend more time in the water than we ever had in the past,” Nelms says. “That’s when I really started to pick up some information. I learned a lot about how she learns, and I came to the conclusion that the less you say, the better. It’s mostly her asking questions and me trying to get her to a place where she’s comfortable.”

Yet not everything was hunky-dory Down Under. The anti-Coughlin sentiment had swelled among her teammates in the weeks leading up to the trip, and now her presumed preferential treatment became the prime topic of discussion. The team was bonding, all right—united in its censure of the Bears’ star swimmer.

“Everyone was saying stuff in the locker room,” backstroker Helen Silver recalled several months after the trip. “We were doing all these things as a team, and Natalie would be off with Keiko (Price) or Milt. It kind of felt like the things she and Teri were working for were separate from what we were doing as a team.

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