Anthony Ervin

Chasing Water


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established story is that Ervin left swimming because he met his swimming goals and wanted to pursue other interests like music; that he auctioned off his gold medal out of humanitarian impulses. All true enough. But truth is like a matryoshka doll, with dolls nested within dolls: take apart the outer shell and you’re left with a severed façade and a deeper truth. His athletic efforts may have transpired under spotlights, but deeper struggles unfolded in isolation. Medals, titles, and records may bestow fame, but a short-lived one; athletes are doomed earlier than most to the fate of time-ravaged Ozymandias. As A.E. Housman wrote in “To An Athlete Dying Young”:

       And early though the laurel grows

       It withers quicker than the rose.

      Or as Charles Bukowski more bluntly put it:

       being an athlete grown old

       is one of the cruelest of fates . . .

       now the telephone doesn’t ring,

       the young girls are gone,

       the party is over.

      By discarding the laurel, Anthony Ervin preempted destiny, cheating it of its cruel withering hand. As with Andre Agassi, another gifted athlete who resented his sport for most of his career, Ervin stands outside the archetype of the driven, striving champion. His story is interesting not for what he achieved and lost, but for what he rejected and rediscovered.

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      Waiting behind my block before the race, I’m an automaton, body and mind on cruise control. The entire process is ritualized and rote—walking out in line, sitting down, removing the uniform and headphones, standing up, taking deep breaths—every aspect programmed to keep all distractive thought at bay. The official’s whistle calls us up to the blocks. The crowd is loud. I bend down, arms hanging, poised to clutch the block. There are a few final cries and exhortations before it finally goes silent.

      “Take your mark” rings out. I hunch down, gripping the block. But I’m unable to obey the simple command of those three words, unable to take my mark, or at least stay on it. Instead I’m off balance, swaying. For whatever reason, I can’t keep my energy coiled and find myself falling forward. It’s a slight movement, but it’s enough. The starter holds the signal for longer than usual. I pull my body weight backward, trying to offset my forward momentum. Just as I lean back, the starting signal goes off. Maybe the official was waiting for me to stop moving. Or maybe someone else took awhile to come down. Who knows.

      We all dive off the block, but not at the same time. The seven of them dive and I follow. I’m last off the block, last by a lot, still airborne when the others are already underwater. I was hoping that by some miracle I’d have a great start, one that might put me in favorable position for gold. That miracle doesn’t come. But this time I can’t blame it on my Achilles shoulder. There’s no dislocation, no shockwave of adrenaline in midflight, no need to pop my shoulder back into socket. There’s only the awareness that I had a terrible start.

      When I surface, over half a body length behind the others, I do the one thing I know how to do. Or rather the one thing that comes naturally to me. It’s less something I do than a feeling I search for, one of continuous acceleration, a feeling not of fast but faster. It’s the essence of how I train and race. It’s something like what opium addicts refer to as chasing the dragon, the desperate quest for that elusive and irreproducible first high. Except in my case, it’s not a high I’m chasing but a fluid connection. And the vessel isn’t opium but water.

      I put my head down and swim.

      _________________

      2.

      All in the Game

       Go then if you must, but remember, no matter how foolish your deeds, those who love you will love you still.

      —Sophocles, Antigone

       All in the game, yo. All in the game.

      —Omar from HBO’s The Wire

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      But forget the exterior. It was from the inside, at least from within the temporary wings, that its form-over-function character was apparent. Below, one could see the fans and, beyond that, the pool; but in front, instead of a panorama of the far side of the stadium, all one could see were white steel girders and the low gray belly of the ceiling—an impressive ceiling, no doubt, one that “swells and ripples with sinuous energy . . . buckles and writhes,” to use the words of one inspired reviewer, but nonetheless one whose sinuous swelling blocked my view.