Miles's blog

Missy Franklin is the “It gir” of these Olympics.  Not only has she performed well in the pool, but her positive demeanor and big smile have won over everyone from Barak Obama to Justin Bieber.  I guess Missy is excited that the power of television will bring forth an introduction with the Biebs.  Maybe she can get a ride in his $150,000 electric sports car (although she had better be prepared to go really fast on the Los Angeles highways). 

Missy is an unusual person.  She turned down hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize, appearance, and endorsement money to retain her amateur standing.  This allowed her to swim in the Colorado girls high school state championships.  She won the 100 yard backstroke, a nice tune up to her gold medal at the Olympics in the same event.  She must have been coasting in the high school meet because she only won by four seconds.  Can you imagine how it felt to be the other swimmers in this race?

Actually, I can.  I had a similar experience in my final race in high school.  Most of you probably don’t know that I was the captain of the swim team.  Not that I was much of a swimmer.  But my brother was a great swimmer so when he went to practice as a kid my mother took me there, too.  My brother Mark developed into a champion swimmer in high school, setting records that lasted literally decades, I barely learned to swim from one end to the other.  I joined the swim team in high school because I couldn’t do anything else.  (Those who remember when we used to play basketball at lunch will attest to the accuracy of that statement.)

Suffice to say I was not very good.  I won a couple of races every year when we competed against schools without swimming pools or where they could only enter someone who just passed his guppy certification.  In my senior year I was swimming the 200 and 400 free style, long events for which the coach did not want to waste any of his competitive swimmers.  The 400 free is not a real long race in the Olympics, running well under four minutes for 400 meters.  I, on the other hand, would take more than five minutes to swim 400 yards.  While I was swimming I could see that the officials and coaches would leave the pool area to get coffee, use the bathroom, or make phone calls.  I believe for one meet they actually watched an entire episode of “All in the Family.”

At any rate, my final meet was the league championship.  I knew my competitive swimming career was coming to an end after eight years, but I was neither wistful or nostalgic.  Mostly I was grateful that I would not have to spend significant portions of every day wet, cold, and looking like a skinny, very pale, drowned rat. 

I had little chance to win anything, but my chances were significantly diminished when one of the schools in our league, Harvard-St. George, entered someone in the 400.  Harvard did not have a pool, nor a team.  What they did have was a kid named Jon Erikson.  Erikson had not raced a single race that year, nor paid any attention to swimming in the worst athletic league in the Chicago area.  Mostly he spent his time training for a more demanding pursuit.  Jon Erikson, you see, had already swum the English Channel.  At age 14.

Erikson’s father Ted had also swum the English Channel.  I remember him on the pool deck, sporting a stylish salt and pepper goatee, looking like an athlete.  The younger Erikson appeared on the deck for the preliminary heats, having spent no time at all around the meet before that.  He spoke to no one.  Of course we all knew who he was, and I was somewhat in awe as we stood next to each other at the starting blocks, waiting for the previous heat to finish.  This was a long time ago and my memory is not that great, but I recall that Erikson was a lot bigger than I was (all 145 pounds of me).  He said nothing to me, but seemed like some sort of Greek god.

The gun sounded and off we went.  Well, actually, off Erikson went.  I never actually saw him again.  Every lap a blur went by me, and I felt his wake wash over me.  I have a vague memory that he lapped me at one point.  I am sure that by the time I finished Erikson had not only completed his race, but he had left the pool deck.  Seriously.  I never saw him again. 

Erikson went on to swim the English Channel again, both ways in 1976; and in 1981 he was the first person to swim it three ways non-stop, a feat which took more than 38 hours. 

So I can appreciate how those poor girls in Colorado felt losing to Missy Franklin.  I bet Missy at least talked to them.  In 40 years they will have one hell of a memory.