The first Olympic games I remember were the 2008 games in Beijing, China. I was 11 years old and my family and I were on vacation in Pensacola, Florida during the start of the games. At 11, I was more interested in walking on the boardwalk and going kayaking with dolphins, than watching a bunch of people that I don’t know, compete for medals that had no real value to me. At the time, I swam for a small club team of about 50 and my biggest meet was 45 minutes away in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Of course every child has dreams, but I never even imagined the Olympics being a possibility. Eight years later I sit in my living room, in my #roadtorio shirt, watching a past teammate, Hali Flickinger, compete in the final of the 200 fly at Rio. She was once an 11-year-old like me, dreaming about the Olympics and wondering what possibilities were out there.
Like many of you, my eyes have been glued to the TV this past week. My Olympic sport of choice? Swimming of course! From Lilly King’s political statements against Russia, to Michael Phelps's many historical swims, it has been one to remember. The U.S. is dominating in the pool and people are noticing-- by people I don’t just mean other swimmers. At one point, there were even multiple swimmers' names trending on Twitter. However, there is a lot that the average viewer doesn’t realize about the 47 months between Olympic games.
When you watch Phelps out-touch Chad Le Close in the 200-meter butterfly, what you don’t know is that he probably has been visualizing this race for months. He has been training physically and mentally for that race for years. When you watch the races, you don’t see the thousands of hours spent at the pool. You don’t see the 5 a.m. practices nobody wants to go to, or the hundreds of thousands of yards swam each year. All the average viewer sees is the medal around their necks, but not the hundreds of races between each medal.
It can sometimes be infuriating as someone who’s life revolves around the sport, to see someone post about swimming when you know full well that they only watch it every four years. They probably don’t even know the school has a swim team, let alone that we had a better record than the football team this past year! Even after posting on social media and telling everyone about it, the only people at our meets are our parents. So do we not have the right to be angry when people talk about the Olympians like they care about the sport?
Of course we do! But we try to ignore the fact that you only care when people are breaking world records, in the hopes that maybe one day you will take notice when we break school records. We aren’t asking for you to come to every meet, we just ask that you respect our sport and maybe wish us luck if you know we have a meet that day. You never know, one of us could be the next Nathan Adrian or Missy Franklin
