Relentless Spirit Read online

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  Copyright © 2016 by Stargazer Productions

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  ISBN 978-1-101-98492-5 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-101-98493-2 (ebook)

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  For my one True Father,

  To be your daughter is a privilege. In every word I speak, every action I carry out, and each intention that lies in my heart, may it all direct the world back to you.

  To my earthly mother and father,

  My greatest fear in life is that I will never be able to be the kind of parent you were to me. There is no greater joy in my life than knowing that no matter where life takes us and what it may bring, nothing could ever separate me from your love.

  Thank you.

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  My Teddy Bear Moment

  ONE. HOW WE GOT HERE

  My Daddy’s-Little-Girl Moment

  TWO. MORE THAN ONE WAY TO MAKE A FAMILY

  My At-the-Ready Moment

  THREE. GROWING UP

  My Letting-Go Moment

  FOUR. MAKING A SPLASH

  My State-Championship Moment

  FIVE. LONDON

  My Hundredth-of-a-Second Moment

  SIX. HAVE A LITTLE FAITH

  My “Welcome to College” Moment

  SEVEN. HAVING MY BACK

  My 1:39 Moment

  EIGHT. HOME, AGAIN

  Our Moment of Trial

  NINE. RIO

  PHOTOGRAPHS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Relentless . . .

  Steady and persistent. Constant. Unyielding. Showing no signs of letup, no drop-off in intensity, severity, strength . . .

  There’s something very Beyoncé about the word, don’t you think? It’s empowering—so much so that I’ve taken to writing it on my wrist before I compete. It’s engraved on a silver ring I like to wear. I’ve even got it printed on the band of my favorite pair of goggles.

  Relentless . . .

  It reminds me to keep on, moving ever forward, hard. But I don’t need the reminder, really. It’s how I swim, how I live my life, who I am. Seeing that word, writing it down . . . it just reinforces what’s already there. It tells me to reach deep down for my very best, even when it feels like there’s nothing left. Even when every muscle in my body is telling me I’m done.

  When I’m in a hard place, I write it down.

  When I’m facing a challenge, I write it down.

  When I get to that place where I could not have practiced any harder, smarter, longer, I write it down and move on to my dry-land workout, my evening swim, whatever’s next on my schedule.

  Relentless . . .

  There are a lot of quotes on the Internet that talk about what it means to never give up, but those words don’t do it for me. If that’s what works for you, that’s great. But I hear a phrase like “Don’t quit!” and it gets me no closer to where I need to be. It tells me I can push ahead but stay on autopilot. It tells me I can get by on minimal effort. It tells me that good enough is good enough. But that’s not me. A line like that, it might be fine if the goal is just to see things through, but that’s never been my goal. My goal is to swim with every ounce of heart, every ounce of spirit I can muster. At all times. No matter what.

  Relentless . . . I wear the word on my wrist, strap it to my head, keep it at my fingertips, at the ever-ready.

  So I write it down. And just to make sure I’m paying attention, I put it on the cover of my book—the book you now hold in your hands.

  Relentless spirit . . . because there is no letup, no drop-off, no quit in me until I touch the wall.

  My Teddy Bear Moment

  2009 DUEL IN THE POOL—MANCHESTER, ENGLAND

  Dear God: Please help me and Team USA do the best that we can do this weekend. Watch over us, help us, calm us. Wish me luck.

  —journal entry, written just before my first-ever national-team appearance

  I was fourteen years old. I’d traveled to Canada and Europe with the junior national team, but this was my first time swimming overseas for the national team. As big deals go, this was all the way up there. I was incredibly excited, but also nervous. Not incredibly nervous, I don’t think, but a little worried how things would go. I had no idea what to expect.

  Think about where you were in your life at fourteen—think about what you were doing—and then put yourself in a situation where you’re doing your thing alongside the very best in the world. Where you’re caught in a great swirl of attention and excitement bigger than you could have ever imagined. Where you’re way, way, way from your comfort zone. It wasn’t like me to feel intimidated, but how can you not be intimidated by something like that? How can you keep your stomach from doing backflips? I mean, I was just a kid—a confident, world-class swimmer, but still just a kid.

  The jumble of nerves that found me on this rookie trip had nothing to do with swimming—it felt to me like I had that part down. I loved swimming! That was the easy part. This wasn’t me being arrogant or cocky. This was just me being me—being honest with myself. I knew my times in the 100-meter freestyle were good enough to put me in the same pool as all those great swimmers. It was what was going on away from the pool that had me on edge. We were in Manchester, England, for the Duel in the Pool—a fun event that has as much to do with building team morale and encouraging a kind of camaraderie with swimmers from other countries as it does with competition. It’s set up like the high school dual meets I loved to swim back home, but with an international us-versus-them twist to the competition—the us being the United States team, and the them being a combined group from the British, German, and Italian national teams. (By the way, there were a lot of national-team swimmers who were not participating in this event, so it really was an honor for me to be there with this group.) We’d never lost one of these meets, I learned once I got over to England, but it’s not like it was a crazy-intense event. Still, there was a ton of pressure on me to do well, on top of the pressure I put on myself. Mostly, it was a team-building, team-bonding event, and a chance for us to see where we stood on the world stage without a whole lot on the line. A chance for me to see where I stood. And an incredible opportunity to race alongside swimmers I’d been admiring since I was a little girl.

  You have to realize, until I s
tarted swimming for the national team, I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to what the rest of the world was doing. USA Swimming was the bee’s knees, as far as I was concerned, so my focus was on the swimmers who would now be my teammates: Dana Vollmer, Natalie Coughlin, Rebecca Soni . . . these women were like rock stars to me.

  The pool was short course, meters. Over the years, I’ve come to love the long-course events, which really play to my strengths as a swimmer, but I was still getting used to these international distances. When I look back, I can see that this short-course event was the perfect way for me to get my feet wet with the national-team members, but when I was in the middle of it I couldn’t help but feel like I was in over my head. Like it was all a little too much, a little too soon. I was ready, but I wasn’t quite there yet, if that makes any sense. Again, it wasn’t the swimming part that had me worried; it was the everything-else part. It was not knowing if or how I’d fit in. It was moving about with all these giants of the sport, trying to convince myself that I belonged with this group. This last piece had me worried most of all. I’d met Michael Phelps the year before, and I also knew Dagny Knutson, who’d been an amazing high school swimmer, mostly freestyle, but other than that I didn’t know anybody on the team. By reputation? . . . yeah, I knew them all. But to say hello? . . . no way. Remember, these were the athletes I’d been watching race on television since I was five years old. To most of them, I was probably just some gangly girl who’d taken a spot on the team that was meant for one of their former teammates—because, let’s face it, that’s just who I was.

  Up until I was thirteen, when I made the junior national team, my parents often accompanied me to meets. (They still do!) However, when I swam for the national team I had to actually travel with the team. This would take some getting used to—and here I was, getting used to it. We had our own flight, our own hotel, our own schedule. My mother and father were there to cheer me on, but for the most part I was on my own. I even had my own roommate—for this trip, it was Rebecca Soni, who’d won a gold and two silvers at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Rebecca’s gold medal swim in the 200-meter breaststroke set a world record, so I was over the moon. She was one of my idols. I had her picture up in my room at home, and here I was, half a world away, sharing a room with her. (OMG, right?) It would be a cliché to say it was surreal, but I can’t think of a better way to describe it, so let’s just go with surreal. At times it felt like I could separate myself from the scene and watch it unfold in a slow-motion way, almost like it was happening to someone else. Other times I wanted to get on the phone with one of my girlfriends back home and say, “You’ll never believe who I’m rooming with on this trip!” But there’s no way I could have made the phone call—I had to play it cool here, folks.

  So there I was, smooshed into what had to be the smallest hotel room in all of England—not much bigger than a broom closet—with Rebecca Soni, who couldn’t have been sweeter or more welcoming. Really, she was incredible. It was such a great kindness, the way she took me in and made a place for me on this trip. It was December, just a week or so before Christmas—my absolutely favorite time of the year. Everywhere we looked, there were reminders of the season, so I was back and forth between being excited, in a little-kid way, and being anxious, also in a little-kid way. Like I said, I was straddling that line between being ready and being not ready. Between feeling like I belonged and wondering what in the world I was doing there.

  Rebecca Soni was more than eight years older than me, which basically meant she could have been my babysitter, but we had so much fun. Our beds were about six inches apart, and the room was so teeny-tiny it felt like we had to take turns standing up and getting dressed, but I remember we laughed and laughed. I can’t imagine I was her first choice for a roommate, but she never let me feel like she’d rather be with someone her own age, someone she’d known all along. To Rebecca, I’m sure, this was just another night on the road on a long string of many, another challenge to get past as she trained to defend her gold medal and maybe break her own world record. To me, it was more like a slumber party, a big adventure—one pinch-me moment after another. But Rebecca was great, even though the whole time we were in the hotel it was all I could do to make sure I didn’t come across as some starstruck kid.

  I tried to play it cool, but I didn’t do such a good job of it. (Just to be clear, playing it cool wasn’t exactly one of my strengths—and if you must know, I don’t think I’ve gotten any better at it over the years.) Almost as soon as we got settled in, the organizers of the meet brought us out for the opening ceremonies. I’d known this was about to happen, but only in theory. Once it was all laid out for me, once we were good to go and there was a script I was meant to follow, it started to freak me out. The way they had it set up was we were given these special robes to wear, and then each of us was given a little teddy bear. We were supposed to sign our teddy bear and then, at the appropriate moment, toss it back up to the crowd—where I guess some other starstruck kid was meant to catch it and take it home. It was all very adorable—just good, harmless fun. But as they were giving me all these instructions I kept thinking somebody had made a terrible mistake. I was genuinely concerned about throwing this teddy bear—like, really, really concerned. I actually sought out my mom to talk to her about it.

  She said, “What are you so worried about, Missy?”

  I said, “Are you kidding me? What if some little girl catches my teddy bear and she’s got no idea who I am?”

  I honestly thought some little girl would grab that bear, look at my signature, crinkle up her face in confusion or disappointment, and throw it back—that’s how unsure of myself I was in that setting. I felt like an impostor. It was mortifying, terrifying. I thought for sure I was going to be getting a teddy bear to the face. And then I realized that just a year or so before, I could have been one of those little girls, lining up to meet all these great swimmers, muscling out everyone else in the crowd to grab a teddy bear of my own. It was overwhelming.

  Thankfully, my mom was able to calm me down. I might have earned my way onto the Duel in the Pool squad with all these national-team swimmers, but I still needed my mommy. (This also never changed.) She said, “Aw, honey. You’re just being silly. Nobody’s gonna throw back your teddy bear. They’ll be glad to have it, and they’ll keep it forever.”

  She was right, it turned out—at least about the not-throwing-it-back part. I never actually saw who wound up catching my teddy bear, but I waited a couple of beats to make sure it didn’t come flying back out of the crowd, and when it didn’t I let out a sigh of relief that could have probably been heard all across the United Kingdom.

  At this dual meet, each team entered three swimmers in each event. Every heat was a finals heat, meaning there were no preliminary swims. Every time you got in the pool you had a chance to score points for your team. Points were awarded to the top three finishers in the individual events—five points for first, three points for second, and one point for third. Head-to-head relays were winner-take-all, good for seven points. And, because of this finals-only format, the event only ran for two days, which was a whole lot different than a traditional meet, which might run for three days or more and include preliminary and (sometimes) semifinal heats.

  The entire team was wonderful to me. It was like I was everybody’s little sister. But it’s not like I could just smile and be cute and soak in the experience. I had a job to do. I had to put points on the board for my team—that’s why I was there. More than that, I had to show everyone that I belonged, that my times weren’t a fluke. For a couple of agonizing moments, I thought I’d be found out and exposed. A part of me thought I’d be sent home—one and done with my national-team career. My entire focus was on swimming my one event and trying to show everyone that I belonged in that pool with all these great swimmers, but something came up. Jack Bauerle, the coach for our Duel in the Pool team, took me aside and told me he wanted me to swim the 4x100-mete
r freestyle relay.

  I’d already competed in the 100-meter freestyle, my one event at that meet, and I was mostly happy with my swim. I finished fourth, so I didn’t score any points for our team, but I did finish ahead of one of my American teammates, so it made sense that Coach Bauerle was looking at me for the relay. Dana Vollmer had set a US record in the 100-meter freestyle, which was good for only second place behind Francesca Halsall of Great Britain, who’d made it to the finals in the 100-meter free at the last Olympics, in Beijing.

  This kind of call, it’s a game-day decision. The coach looks at his or her swimmers and figures who’s swimming well, who’s fresh, who gives the team the best chance to win at just that moment. It was about the last thing I was expecting, to get selected for this race. At first I thought maybe Coach Bauerle was making a mistake. When he took me aside to tell me, I think I even said, “Me? Are you sure?”

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want the honor or the responsibility—just that I didn’t think I’d heard right.

  He said, “I’m sure. Thinking we might lead you off.”

  Um . . . what?

  This was a whole new level of expectation for me. Once I’d gotten my head around the fact that I’d be swimming that relay, maybe an hour or so before the race, my first thought was that I’d swim in second or third position. That’s usually where a coach puts his solid, core swimmers who might have a little less sprinting speed, a little less finishing speed. For swimmers who are a part of Team USA, relays are the most important thing to us, and what we take the most pride in is being a team. I don’t know if that’s an American thing, but here I was, my first time out as a national-team swimmer, and it was clear to me that this was a big deal. I got that. Each spot in the lineup is important. Every coach has his or her own strategy when it comes to relays, but usually you put your fastest swimmer in the anchor leg. Next, you put your second-fastest swimmer in the leadoff spot, and fill in the middle spots in whatever way makes sense. But it can vary. Some coaches like to go from slow to fast, and others like to start out with their two fastest swimmers and build a real cushion for those final two legs. There’s no right way to set your lineup, but in my little-kid head, just then, the idea that my coach wanted me to lead off this relay in such a talented field was plainly terrifying, intimidating.