The spat was inevitable, considering the amount of time they’d spent together and the tension circling through the hot Athens air. Coughlin and McKeever had been cooped up in close quarters since the Olympic Trials, through the pre-Olympic training camps at Stanford, and on the Spanish island of Mallorca, a period that spanned 5 weeks. They’d had hundreds of conversations, many about how to approach the upcoming competition. Now, as they set up shop in Athens and prepared for the most important meet of either of their lives, the anxious atmosphere momentarily overcame them.
On Saturday, August 14, 2004, the first day of the 8-day swimming competition, Coughlin and McKeever were at the warm-up pool at the Olympic venue, preparing for a light workout before that night’s 400-meter freestyle relay final, when the coach offered to carry the swimmer’s bag. “I’ll carry my own bag,” Coughlin snapped.
McKeever recoiled. She understood that she had been hovering over Coughlin but was taken aback by the intensity of the swimmer’s response. “I know you’re trying to help me,” Coughlin said. “It’s just that everybody’s on edge, and it’s driving me crazy.”
That was a clear signal to McKeever to back off, and the coach did, ultimately viewing Coughlin’s mini-blowup as a positive thing. “She was right; everyone was on edge,” McKeever said later. “Her saying that allowed us to clear the air, and we were both in a much better space after that.”
As both Coughlin and McKeever would learn over the course of the 8-day swimming competition, people respond very differently to intense pressure. In this case, some turned insular, while others attempted to keep things light. Still others were instigators—and some individuals completely buckled under the strain.
The vibe of the US team, in general, was one of supportive solidarity. Beginning in July, at the start of the team’s 6-week training camp at Stanford, Coughlin had enjoyed bonding, particularly with legendary teammate Jenny Thompson, fellow sprinter Colleen Lanne, and roommate Lindsay Benko. But there had been some internal sniping. At breakfast one morning at the team’s Palo Alto hotel, several of the team’s coaches noticed that their colleague Dave Salo was missing.
“He went for a run,” one of them said.
“Really?” another coach piped in. “Is he out there doing really intense sprints, then resting, then sprinting, then resting…?”
Everyone at the table laughed at the dig on Salo’s nontraditional training techniques—everyone except Coughlin. I wonder if they realize that he actually did run a marathon based on that training philosophy.
The Stanford camp, only 45 minutes from her condo in Emeryville, felt exceptionally long to Coughlin—and not just because she signed more than her share of Cardinal-colored swim caps during poolside autograph sessions, fighting back the urge to offer the taunting postscript “Go Bears.” Though US women’s coach Mark Schubert allowed her to go home for a weekend, she was mostly frustrated by being cooped up in the proximity of family, friends, and familiar restaurants. In an effort to quell the boredom, she guilted most of her Bay Area friends into making the trip down at some point.
In such an intensely focused and insular environment, there was bound to be some tension. One day fellow Baltimore-area natives Michael Phelps and Katie Hoff waged an animated argument over whose coach was better—the two swam for the same club but were coached by different men. Haley Cope actually swam in McKeever’s group (along with Coughlin, Thompson, and Lanne) without incident; in fact, she and Coughlin slipped back into friendship mode, relying on the familiarity of their connection amid a pressure-filled environment. Cope, however, did develop some animosity for a fellow swimmer whose behavior would later make the former “Girls of the Pac-10” model with the penchant for blunt critiques seem remarkably tame.
There was also some choppiness within the pool as the swimmers adjusted to the coaching staff and to their respective roles on the team. When it came time to practice relay starts, Coughlin and Cope were surprised to find that they seemed far more advanced than most of their peers. They had always known that McKeever emphasized the finer points, and now they were truly grateful. They also worked to help bring their teammates up to speed—once viewed as the favorites in all three relays, the United States now had stiff competition in the 400 free and 400 medley relays, primarily from the Australians. A bad start or exchange could mean the difference between gold and silver.
As always, the decision of who to swim on which relays, and in which order, was an intensely political matter. In past Olympics there had been glaring controversies over coaches’ selections, and Athens would be no exception.
The first test would come on the opening day of competition, less than 12 hours after the conclusion of the previous night’s Opening Ceremonies, at which many of the swimmers had elected not to march. In the preliminaries, the US team rested Coughlin, Thompson, and Kara Lynn Joyce, going with a lineup of Amanda Weir, Lanne, Benko, and Maritza Correia. The Aussies, meanwhile, used their big guns in the morning, resting only Petria Thomas, yet the team of Alice Mills, Libby Lenton, Sarah Ryan, and Jodie Henry managed just a 3:38.26 to the United States’ 3:39.46. Were the Aussies sandbagging? In another 8 hours or so, the Americans would find out.
For the US coaches, the question was who to team with Coughlin, Thompson, and Joyce. Weir, with a 54.50, had produced the best morning split, ahead of Correia (54.74) and Benko (54.80). Schubert and his assistants, including McKeever, concluded that Weir had seized the moment and proven she was the team’s best option. When McKeever broke the news to Correia, the former Georgia swimmer burst into tears.
As it turned out, it wouldn’t have mattered. As the relay finals played out, it became clear that the Australians were highly formidable foes—and that Coughlin’s biggest obstacle in the 100 free might not be Inge de Bruijn, the defending champion, or Lenton, the world record holder, but Henry, who was ripping through the water like a tsunami, obliterating everything in her path.
Coughlin had preferred to lead off the relay, which would allow her, among other things, to utilize her superior form before the water became too choppy. It might also set up the United States with a nice lead, given that neither Lenton nor Henry was leading off for the Aussies. But in the end, the coaches told Coughlin that Joyce had to lead off, because they lacked confidence in her ability to time her start to another swimmer’s touch. Joyce, apparently, had always been allowed to lead off for Georgia and had not yet perfected her relay mechanics.
That meant Coughlin would swim second, opposite Lenton, while Thompson, who had been perhaps the most clutch relay performer in US history (eight for eight in previous Olympic relay efforts, dating back to the 1992 Games in Barcelona) would swim the anchor leg against Henry. Ideally, Thompson would have a lead when she entered the water. For that to happen, Coughlin would have to hold her own against Lenton, and Joyce and Weir would have to win their respective battles with Mills and Thomas.
For the United States, the first sign of trouble came in the leadoff leg: Expected to push the team to a decent advantage, Joyce finished in a disappointing 54.74, essentially the same as Mills’s 54.75. Coughlin, after falling behind Lenton in the early going, rallied to close the gap in the second lap. Her split of 53.83 seconds was the best of her career, close enough to Lenton’s 53.57 to keep the United States alive. Weir made things more interesting with a 54.05 to Thomas’s 54.67, giving Thompson the lead for which the US team had hoped.
Still, Henry entered the water and began closing on her almost immediately. It would take another magical anchor leg by the venerated Thompson, in her fourth Olympics, to pull off the gold.
Thompson, predictably, rose to the occasion, finishing with a sizzling split of 53.77 seconds. But it didn’t matter; she was chasing a barracuda. Henry, the cheery 20-year-old from Brisbane, merely produced the fastest relay split in history: 52.95 seconds. The Aussies ripped home in a time of 3:35.94, breaking the world record set by Germany in 2002 by .06, while the United States (3:36.39, an American record) edged the Netherlands (3:37.59, powered by de Bruijn’s 53.37 anchor leg) for the silver.
For Coughlin, the disappointment didn’t last long: After all the years of adversity and anticipation, she was an Olympic medalist. She’d performed admirably in her first test on the world’s grandest stage, and she’d dispensed with the first-swim jitters before the all-important 100 back.
After warming down, Coughlin—noticeably smaller in stature than the 11 other swimmers around her—stood proudly on the medal stand as the Australian anthem blared. She was upbeat at her press conference and, afterward, kept staring at her shiny new silver medal. She gave it to McKeever, who popped her head over the fence separating the warm-up pool area from the walkway behind the stands, where Coughlin’s family members lingered. McKeever called Jim and Zennie Coughlin over and handed the medal to them above the fence so that they could inspect their daughter’s prize.
McKeever, too, seemed both elated and relieved. It had been a good month thus far, beginning 9 days earlier, when Lauren Medina and Erin Reilly had competed for a national title in the 200-meter freestyle at Stanford. Already in Europe, McKeever had set her alarm clock in the middle of the night and had called to wish both swimmers luck. In the final, 15-year-old Kate Dwelley of the Terrapins swim club—one of Ray Mitchell’s latest teenage studs—led coming off the last turn. Then Medina, who had once doubted whether she’d be good enough to swim at Cal, thought to herself, No way I’m letting this kid beat me, and promptly ran her down. Medina won the race in a time of 2:01.89, ahead of Dwelley’s 2:02.05, with Reilly taking fourth in 2:02.45. When McKeever heard the news, it kept her smiling all day: “Lauren Medina, national champion” had a heck of a ring to it.
Now, on the first night of competition in Athens, McKeever had fallen just short of helping to put together an Olympic championship relay. Her and the other coaches’ decision to use Weir on the relay—and to swim Thompson on the last leg—certainly had been validated. “You know what? I’m a pretty damn good coach,” she said, smiling with uncharacteristic bravado as she peered over the fence. She meant that after weeks of interacting with Schubert, Richard Quick, and Frank Bush, men who represented the best in her business, she felt neither out of place nor superfluous. She laughed at her statement, certain it sounded cockier than she’d intended. “I mean, I’m with some great coaches here,” she clarified. “But I feel like there’s a reason I’m here, too.”
A couple of minutes later and about 15 feet away, Coughlin, too, popped her head over the fence. Some loitering fans looked on obliviously—one of the world’s best swimmers was right there in front of them, but she might as well have been a Swedish team manager. Even Coughlin’s family members were unaware; only Ethan Hall, Coughlin’s boyfriend, noticed the new medalist’s appearance.
Separated by the mesh-covered chain-link fence, they shared a couple of tender moments before Coughlin disappeared. Finally noticing the scene, two American women looked up at Hall and cooed, “Oooh, that’s what he looks like.” Then Coughlin was gone: The 100 back preliminaries would be held the following morning, and she needed all the rest she could get. “This is where the animals come so that we can see them,” Hall joked afterward. “You can pet them, but you can’t feed them.”
Coughlin would have appreciated the joke—her bouts with boredom had extended from the Stanford camp to the August camp in lovely Mallorca (where the team was basically locked down, what with the Games approaching) to the first few days in Athens. Rest was imperative, which translated to a lot of time impersonating a kalamata olive. Coughlin, armed with a serious DVD stash, got hooked on shows like 24 and Nip/Tuck and laughed at the outrageous comedy of Dave Chappelle.
Though there wasn’t much time for sightseeing, Coughlin managed to make one memorable trip to the Plaka district of Athens, with McKeever and Dave Salo, 2 days before Opening Ceremonies. A year earlier, while visiting with a small US delegation after the World Championships, Coughlin and McKeever had shopped at a jewelry store called Aphrodites. Coughlin bought a pendant, while McKeever scored a pair of diamond earrings. During their return to the city, the two women planned to go back and duplicate each other’s previous purchase.
“Let’s wait until the swimming competition is over and you’re totally relaxed,” McKeever suggested.
Coughlin didn’t want to wait. “People were trying to stay off their legs, so you’d sit in their rooms in the Village, watching TV and worrying about your race,” Coughlin said later. “So many people were so worried about the beginning of the biggest meet of their lives; I just had to get out of there.” So she and McKeever dragged Salo onto the subway and into Aphrodites, where Coughlin picked out a pair of luxuriant diamond earrings. The jeweler, whose name was George, agreed to set them while the trio had lunch. They had a glorious meal in the shadow of the famed Acropolis on a hot, clear afternoon, munching on Greek salads and pasta and fresh anchovies as George, a man who seemed to be friends with everyone in town, graciously picked up the tab.
By the end of the afternoon, after another couple of hours shopping and strolling along the Plaka’s narrow streets, Coughlin was reenergized. She felt as though she’d broken out of a hermetically sealed bubble and reentered the real world. It was a world in which no one stopped her to ask for an autograph. The anonymity was nice. But in a few more days, she hoped, that all would change.
Chuck Bohn sat in the sweltering stands at the Olympic Aquatic Center, preparing to watch the first individual race of his granddaughter’s Olympic career, as loud, proud, and unbowed as ever. Bohn, 67, knew all about the terrorist threats and warnings to American visitors not to flash their patriotic colors around Athens, yet here was the former Marine, sporting a red, white and blue “Go USA” cap and a Speedo-issued “Natalie Is Greeced Lightning” T-shirt.
In this post-9/11 world, with US forces occupying Iraq and suicide bombs exploding in Jakarta and Jerusalem, an unprecedented security detail swarmed all over Athens. Bohn, a former infantry soldier and sergeant major whose 24 years in the Marine Corps included three separate tours of duty in Vietnam, had decided not to hide his considerable national pride.
Back at his home in northern California, Bohn had loaded his suitcase with nationalistic shirts and hats while his wife, Zennie (the same name as their daughter, Natalie’s mother), looked on disapprovingly. “What are you doing that for?” she asked Chuck. “They’re telling us not to attract attention to ourselves.”
“You know,” he responded, “I’ve never had to hide who I am, and I don’t plan to start now.”
Any hesitation had completely disappeared on the morning after his arrival in Athens, as Bohn left his hotel in Omonia Square just after dawn and strolled alone among the nearly deserted streets to Syntagma Square. There he encountered a man wearing a “USA” T-shirt and instantly said hello.
“The guy could barely say good morning back to me; he spoke no English,” Bohn said. “Everyone had been warning me not to wear my USA gear, but I figured, ‘If that guy’s wearing it, I sure as heck will.’ ”
Then Bohn laughed and said, “It’s only been a couple of days, but the reception we’ve gotten in Athens has been great. I had more hostility when I was stationed at (San Francisco’s) Treasure Island after I got back from Vietnam in the late ’60s.”
When Coughlin heard the story about Bohn’s Syntagma Square encounter, she smiled. No amount of international tension was going to keep her grandfather from showing his true colors. Besides, she was grateful that he and her other family members had been placed in such convenient accommodations by Speedo. Coughlin’s roommate in Athens, Lindsay Benko, hadn’t been so lucky. The Benkos and the family members of another US swimmer, Brendan Hansen, had booked their rooms through a travel agency and had quite a surprise awaiting them: As they quickly ascertained, they had been placed in a bordello—one whose room rates had been jacked up from $35 to $900 per night to boot. With help from Speedo, the families had been relocated as soon as possible.
The Keller family—whose daughter, Kalyn, and son, Klete, both had qualified for the US team—arrived at their Athens hotel and discovered that it lacked one small detail: a roof. They, too, had been relocated.
The swimmers, meanwhile, were isolated in the Olympic Village, and they were thankful that their competition was held during the first week of the Games. As athletes finished up their events, they began to celebrate, which made for a louder and more raucous atmosphere inside the Village, a potential distraction to those competitors whose big moments would come later in the 17-day festival.
Coughlin was especially thrilled that the 100 back was her first individual event. Get the gold that seemingly awaited her at the end of that race, and she could loosen up and enjoy the rest of her swims.
Her preliminary race went off smoothly, with Coughlin clocking a time of 1:00.45 to rank third among qualifiers. In that night’s semifinals, the water was exceptionally choppy, thanks to a stiff northerly wind, which theoretically should have led to slower times. But Coughlin, who’d trained and competed outdoors for most of her life, was unfazed by the elements. Even during her world-record swim in Fort Lauderdale in August 2002, she’d contended with a pronounced wind. This time, despite not going all out, Coughlin won her semifinal heat in 1:00.17, breaking the Olympic record of 1:00.21 set by Romania’s Diana Mocanu during her gold-medal swim in Sydney.
Cope, meanwhile, went 1:01.13 to make the final, giving the 100 back a decidedly Cal flavor. (Indeed, there was Golden Bear magic all over Athens during the Games, especially at the swimming venue. Between Bohn’s loud “Go Bears” cheers and the Cal script swim cap worn by Croatian sprinter and Cal senior-to-be Duje Draganja, the university seemed to comprise its own nation. The many spectators sporting Cal gear wondered if, had Draganja not been nipped by .01 in the 50-meter freestyle—by American Gary Hall Jr., one of his training partners at Spieker Pool—the world would have heard “Fight for California” as he stood atop the medal stand.)
The second-fastest qualifier in the 100 back had been France’s Laure Manadou, with a time of 1:00.88. As Coughlin went to sleep that night, with the 100 back final slated for the following evening, she did so in the rare position of knowing that in all likelihood, merely replicating her semifinal time in the finals would be good enough for gold.
If Coughlin was overly nervous before the biggest race of her life, the one that in many ways would define her swimming career, she sure did a great job of hiding it. On the morning of Monday, August 16, Coughlin slept in until 9 o’clock, had breakfast, and went to the pool to loosen up with a light workout. She went back to the Olympic Village, ate again, and proceeded to take a 3-hour nap. “Until that day I hadn’t been sleeping very well,” she said later that night. “The beds are really narrow, which means I have to sleep with my arms tucked in, which makes them numb. Plus, in the Village, you hear every little thing. But for some reason, today sleep came really easily.”
The people closest to Coughlin weren’t quite as relaxed, though they did their best to keep one another laughing. On the 20-minute ride to the Olympic Sports Complex via Athens’s sparkling new subway line, Jim and Zennie Coughlin told a story about Natalie’s younger sister that spoke to the family’s apparently genetic supply of grit. “When Megan was 3, we were in Hawaii, and she walked all the way to the top of Diamond Head,” Zennie recalled. “We were willing to carry her, but she insisted. Talk about focus and determination at an early age.”
While Megan and her Athens roommate—Hall, her sister’s boyfriend—made conversation with some fellow subway riders, Jim Coughlin then talked about his older daughter. Noting that Natalie had been born with a heart murmur, Jim said he becomes tense before every one of her important races. (Natalie considers this to be somewhat irrational on his part; heart murmurs, in her words, are common and “not a big deal.”) This race, of course, would be the most important of all. “When she faded at the end of her 200 back at the NCAAs, the ESPN cameras showed my reaction—they showed it again this afternoon when we were interviewed for the Today show—and on the (tape-delayed) telecast it looked like I was devastated that she’d lost,” Jim said. “But that wasn’t it at all. I was terrified. We have a history of people dying young in our family. I thought something might be seriously wrong.”
With a lump in his throat, Coughlin, the grizzled Vallejo police detective, then talked about his daughter’s quest for gold: “You know, I’ve run big, complex task forces. I can be at a grisly murder scene, and I’m completely calm and composed. But when it comes to my own children, it’s totally different. I’m a mess right now. People are acting like she’s got the race won already. They say, ‘What can go wrong?’ Well, the thing is, we’ve seen it go wrong. We were there in Barcelona and in Texas. We know she should win, but until she does, we take nothing for granted.”
Jim’s effervescent wife, Zennie, was determined to enjoy the moment. The woman who used to save the heat sheets from each of her daughters’ races was snapping photos with a disposable camera and soaking up the Olympic atmosphere at every opportunity. After disembarking from the subway and entering the Athens Olympic Sports Complex, where the track and other venues were housed alongside the pool, Zennie spotted a pair of young Asian-American men holding a giant Cal script banner. Smiling broadly, Zennie sprinted toward them, yelling, “Hey, go Bears!” while proudly flashing her similarly decorated shoulder bag.
For all of their understandable nerves, the Coughlins were, even on this night, model swim parents: supportive and upbeat without being crass or overbearing. Months later, when listing the reasons for her former teammate’s success, Haley Cope would say, “You’ve got to give props to her parents. They’re almost the perfect mixture of staying out of it and letting you do your own thing, yet being totally supportive.”
In the minutes before the night’s swimming program began, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” blared over the PA system: Someday, girl, I don’t know when, we’re gonna get to that place that we really wanna go and we’ll walk in the sun…a good, all-American omen? The Coughlins hoped so. Warming up behind the blocks, Natalie was all business, until her name was introduced. Then, despite her nerves, she smiled and waved to each section of the crowd, casting a quick glance toward the area where her friends and family members sat, before putting on her game face once more.
She entered the water, gripped the metal bars above her and waited, heart thumping, adrenaline surging. A career’s worth of practice sessions and crucial races and Pilates workouts and technique adjustments had prepared her for this moment, and she intended to seize it.
A clean start, then her usual underwater mastery, and Coughlin had the lead. She built on it into the turn, touching nearly 0.8 ahead of the field and charging off the wall with power and purpose. Watching at home in Australia, Milt Nelms became more emotional than he’d anticipated. For one thing, he certainly wasn’t one of those What can go wrong? people to whom Jim Coughlin had alluded; though Coughlin was favored, he worried that she’d be overwhelmed by the weight of expectations. “Few people realized the level of unwarranted expectation on Natalie,” he would say later. “People had been talking about her for years, but she was still a virtual rookie with very little international experience and almost no significant international experience, if you consider the ’03 Worlds. My perception is that those kinds of expectations, with all their attendant baggage, can cause an athlete to compete with a sense of need, rather than want. When this is the case, peak performance is almost impossible.”
Watching with friends in Skanor, Sweden, Coughlin’s close friend and former Cal teammate Emma Palsson was appalled when many of the young women in her midst expressed skepticism about Coughlin’s chances. As the race wore on and Coughlin began to tire down the stretch, some were screaming, “See, she’s going to lose!”
“No way!” Palsson yelled defiantly. They don’t know Natalie, she thought to herself. No way she’ll let anyone catch her.
Ethan Hall, who once possessed enough promise to envision himself in such a circumstance, now looked on helplessly as his longtime girlfriend tried to gut out the gold. Zimbabwe’s Kirsty Coventry, the same swimmer who’d caught Coughlin in the 200 back at the NCAA Championships 5 months earlier, was closing in from over in Lane 1, continuing a pattern of “outside smoke” that seemed endemic to the Athens pool, perhaps because lanes 1 and 8 offered the most shelter from the wind. As with the previous night, the wind was blowing wildly, making the water choppy and making the directional flags above the swimmers’ heads whip back and forth.
“She went out so fast, I thought she’d break her world record,” Hall said of Coughlin after the race. “Then, at around 60 meters, I could tell she got real tired. It was weird; she doesn’t usually get tired in the 100. She reached her hand to touch the wall, and it stayed there for a while. The other girl (Coventry) went whip, and I thought, Oh, no—maybe she got beat. But then I looked at the scoreboard, and it was all okay.”
It took Coughlin a few seconds longer than Hall to experience the same sensation, but then the scoreboard rearranged and her name was on top—with a time of 1:00.37 to Coventry’s 1:00.50. France’s Laure Manadou had claimed the bronze in 1:00.88, while Cope was eighth and last in 1:01.76.
Coughlin’s expression was one of joyousness and relief—but a few seconds after she exited the water, it seemed muted, almost showing shreds of disappointment. Her time had been slower than that of her semifinal heat, and she felt she’d failed to produce her best effort in front of by far the largest audience that had ever seen her swim.
“I’m gonna start crying,” McKeever said, greeting Coughlin underneath the stands as she came out of the “mixed zone” and began walking toward the warm-up pool. “I’m just really proud of you.”
Coughlin still seemed subdued. It wasn’t until she reached the medal stand that she began to understand: So what if she hadn’t set a world record? She’d done that before. The goal had been gold, and now she’d achieved it, and no one—not any of those people who’d doubted her—would ever be able to take that away. The joy wasn’t hers alone, either.
She’d won the first gold medal in Athens by any US woman in any sport—indeed, the first gold by an American not named Phelps. She’d honored her country, her university, and her coach—and, in the process, validated their training approach for the world to see.
Now, lining the railing in the stands above were the people closest to her, and they were unabashedly, ebulliently going nuts. That made Coughlin smile more, which in turn encouraged her significant other. “World record holder, Olympic record holder, Olympic gold medalist,” Hall said, smiling proudly. “Not bad.” Chuck Bohn went to buy beers at the concession stand; when he returned, he and his wife unfurled a huge “Natalie Is Greeced Lightning” banner. The wind had died down considerably, and as “The Star-Spangled Banner” played, Coughlin, wearing the wreath of small branches extended to all gold medalists in homage to the ancient Greeks, was so overwhelmed that she forgot to remove it during the anthem. She also neglected to put her hand over her heart and blanked on some of the song’s lyrics.
She didn’t forget to smile, however. Up above, at the top of the stands, a man stood alone, holding a small American flag, staring down intently at Coughlin as it swayed gently in the breeze.
Coughlin was spirited away to the media center to meet the press. Her agent, Janey Miller, was on her cell phones—one from home, one rented while in Athens—virtually nonstop, cementing endorsement opportunities and lining up interviews. Coughlin would join Katie Couric and Matt Lauer on the Today show, which taped the following afternoon. There would be no immediate celebration for the Golden Girl, however—she still had three more races to swim.
In fact, she wouldn’t even get a proper meal. Upstairs in the press center, after her media obligations had been satisfied, Coughlin, wearing a white nylon zip-up Team USA sweatsuit, grimaced as she reached the cafeteria, which had long since closed. “Man, I’ve got such a headache,” she said to McKeever. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, and she looked shellshocked. She took out her new, Jackie O–influenced Dior sunglasses and put them on, and then removed them after a few seconds. “Let’s party,” Coughlin joked.
A few seconds later she turned semiserious: “I’m going on the Today show tomorrow?” she confirmed with Miller. “I’d really like to wear those earrings.” Alas, the diamond studs she’d purchased at Aphrodites had been locked up in a safe-deposit box for the duration of the swimming competition, as per team policy. McKeever grinned and said, “You know, Nat, I think they might make an exception.”
Aaron Peirsol ambled by, looking like a surfer dude dragging his feet through hot sand. Like Coughlin, Peirsol had just won gold in the 100 back, adding to a big night for the US team. The two swimmers said hello, and Coughlin laughed at Peirsol’s gait as he walked away. It was nearly midnight. “My stomach really hurts,” she said, and McKeever sent for a US swimming official, who a few minutes later showed up with a couple of McDonald’s bags filled with lukewarm chicken nuggets and fries. “Ah,” Coughlin said, smiling once more, “the dinner of champions.” She ate a couple of nuggets as she walked across the press center and downed the rest of them on the car ride back to the Olympic Village.
As Coughlin lay in bed long after midnight, reflecting on her accomplishment, her parents were toasting it over a round of ouzo at the bar of their Omonia Square Hotel. In walked Michael Phelps’s mother, Debbie, and his sisters, Whitney and Hillary. They sat down at the table, with Zennie and Debbie exchanging a long, heartfelt hug—an embrace born of years of shared ups and downs (and brutal early-morning wakeup alarms) on opposite coasts. Michael had suffered a rare disappointment early that night, having finished third in the 200 free behind Ian Thorpe and the Netherlands’ Peter van den Hoogenband, but the Phelpses weren’t dwelling on that. This was the Coughlins’ moment, and they graciously shared in the celebration.
“I’m so happy for you,” Debbie said softly to Zennie.
“I know,” Zennie said. “I know.”
The Games weren’t over, of course. Coughlin would be a Golden Girl no matter what else went down, but she had no intention of letting up. If anything, she could now loosen up. Being interviewed by Matt Lauer—and yes, she was wearing those earrings—was a surreal thrill. He’s so down-to-earth, so nice, Coughlin thought to herself. It was the start of a lovefest with Lauer, Katie Couric, and the Today crew that would culminate with an appearance 2 days after the swimming competition concluded, on Coughlin’s 22nd birthday, complete with the on-air presentation of a candle-topped cake.
Coughlin was happy that she didn’t have to compete that Tuesday—her lone day off of the competition—because Wednesday she would swim the grueling 200 free as the leadoff leg of the US 800 free relay team.
That Coughlin, despite not having competed in the event at Trials, would nonetheless be included on the relay was not particularly controversial: She was the team’s best swimmer and had recorded “unshaved” times going into the Trials that rivaled those produced by the top six finishers in Long Beach. But because there is no specific system for making relay-related decisions, drama surrounding the coaches’ choices was virtually inevitable. Such was the case in 2000: At Trials, a talented US swimmer named Cristina Teuscher had the fourth-fastest preliminary time in the 200-meter freestyle. That night she hoped to qualify in the 200 IM, but first she would have to swim the 200 free semifinal. With a similar schedule set for Sydney, Teuscher, who’d won a gold medal as part of the 800 free relay in Atlanta in 1996, planned to focus on the 200 IM. However, she hoped once again to be part of the 800 free relay.
In an article Teuscher wrote for Swimming World magazine months after the Games, she claimed that Richard Quick, the US women’s coach for the 2000 team, had assured her coach, John Collins, that she would be on the 800 free relay in Sydney—prompting her to disqualify herself from the 200 free semis at Trials. Further, Teuscher wrote, after she won a bronze in the 200 IM in Sydney, Quick told her to get some rest because she would “definitely” be part of the 800 free relay the following night. “I was ready to go the next day,” Teuscher, a cocaptain of the 2000 US team, said in the article. “As is customary on national team trips, there was a team meeting before we left for the finals session. At the door, going into the team meeting, Coach Quick stopped me and told me that he was sorry, but he had taken me off the relay. It was 2 hours before finals. There were no explanations…. I felt devastated—not only by Coach Quick as a person but by USA Swimming as an organization.”
Quick’s decision to replace Teuscher with Jenny Thompson, whom he happened to have coached at Stanford, worked out fine for the United States: Thompson anchored an Olympic-record-setting, gold-medal-winning performance. Teuscher, who had also been left off the preliminary relay—ostensibly because she was being rested for the final—missed out on a medal entirely. At the time, at least within swimming circles, this had caused somewhat of a stir. What was about to go down in Athens would dwarf it by comparison.
In choosing the 800 free relay lineup, Schubert and his assistants, as with the 400 free relay, would look to the afternoon’s preliminaries to help them decide who would swim that night’s finals. Coughlin and Kaitlin Sandeno, her old USC rival, were the two strongest swimmers on paper and would thus be saved for the finals. The same would go for 16-year-old Dana Vollmer, a tall Texan who had a serious heart condition that caused her heart randomly to stop beating sometimes; her mother thus stood by with a defibrillator at all of her competitions. Surprisingly, Lindsay Benko, Coughlin’s Athens roommate, was not being rested. Benko, the American record holder in the event, had been struggling in practice and felt she couldn’t come close to matching her best efforts. After a subpar effort in the individual 200 free competition—she swam 2:00.22 in her semifinal heat, nearly 3 seconds off her American record, to finish 14th—Benko came to a selfless decision. She went to Schubert and told him she could best serve the team by swimming in the prelims and skipping the finals. “Give my spot in the evening to Kaitlin,” she advised him. “I’m just not going fast enough.”
That meant that one of the other three swimmers in the prelims would join Coughlin, Vollmer, and Sandeno in the finals. The fairest way to make the decision would be to take the swimmer whose split was fastest in the prelims, but this presented a problem: The last thing a coach wants is for a relay team’s members to place their individual goals above those of the foursome. If one of the swimmers dove in too early, anxious to post a fast split for herself, the US team would be disqualified, depriving all seven competitors of a shot at a medal.
The solution, the coaches decided, was to take the fastest splits while allowing for the start. Because reaction times are measured by the timing system, they could also be subtracted from the splits to provide an adjusted time for each swimmer.
“Don’t worry about your takeoffs,” the coaches told the four swimmers. “We’d rather have you leave late than too early, so just be conservative. We want all your starts to be slow. We’ll make our decision based on the fastest adjusted times, so you don’t have to think about the takeoffs, because they won’t matter.”
The preliminary swim went off seemingly without a hitch: No one left early, and the US team led all qualifiers with a time of 8:00.81. Carly Piper, a tall University of Wisconsin swimmer, had the second-fastest split, but when reaction times were subtracted, her adjusted time was the fastest. Schubert, after consulting with his assistants, confirmed that she would join Coughlin, Sandeno, and Vollmer for that night’s final.
After breaking the news to the swimmers in question, Schubert walked away. Suddenly, there was a loud noise coming from the area near the massage tables that lined the edge of the warm-up/warm-down pool. One of the swimmers who hadn’t been chosen was now screaming into a cell phone, a spectacle that soon attracted the attention of coaches and officials from the United States and numerous other countries. The swimmer, apparently speaking to her boyfriend, launched a profanitylaced tirade against Schubert, his fellow coaches, USA Swimming, and humanity in general. She resisted various people’s attempts to calm her down, physically repelled both a teammate and a USA Swimming official, and continued her protracted rant.
Coughlin, like most of her teammates, was appalled. She felt the swimmer should be disciplined for her tirade—though, at the moment, that wasn’t her immediate concern. First, she had to focus on setting a blistering tone on the relay’s leadoff leg and, given the relative youth and inexperience of Vollmer and Piper, on inspiring those who’d follow to keep up the intensity.
Denied the opportunity to swim the individual 200 free because of the schedule—she’d have had to complete that semifinal minutes before her 100 back final—Coughlin wanted to prove that she was the best in the world at that distance. She had a plan, too: She would start out slowly, give her competitors a false sense of security, and then whip past them before they knew what had hit them.
“Don’t worry if I’m behind at the second turn,” Coughlin told Schubert, “because I’m going to burn the last 100.”
McKeever wanted her to wait even longer. “At 75 meters,” she told Coughlin, “you’re going to drop the hammer.”
Seventh after 100 meters, Coughlin jumped the gun on that plan slightly. With 90 meters remaining, she began transitioning to a faster gear; with 80 meters left, she kicked into overdrive. Soon she was burning like Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River in 1969. One by one, Coughlin picked off her competitors, loving every minute of it. She hit the wall in 1:57.74, a pure time (given that it led off a relay) faster than that produced by the gold medalist in the individual 200 free, Romania’s Camelia Potec (1:58.03). Coughlin felt incredibly energized, believing she could have gone another 50 meters at that pace—a sensation that would later convince her that she’d had the potential to set a world record in the 200 free.
Schubert’s heart jumped—with Sandeno swimming the way she’d been swimming in Athens, the United States looked good as gold. If Piper and Vollmer could come through, well, something really special might be happening. The world record in the event was the oldest swimming mark on the books.
It was also, from the US perspective, the most objectionable.
Back in 1987, four East German swimmers had combined to finish the event in 7:55.47. The race was contested in an era marked by suspicion over steroid use, particularly by Soviet-bloc nations, amid unsophisticated testing procedures. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, documents kept by the Stasi, East Germany, secret police were discovered that confirmed widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs by East German athletes.
Schubert, the former Mission Viejo Nadadores coach, had bristled in 1976 when one of his star swimmers, Shirley Babashoff, failed to win a single individual gold at the Montreal Games. Babashoff was one of the greatest US swimmers in history, yet four times she finished second to an East German swimmer before finally earning a relay gold. When she complained about the possibility of drug use by the East Germans who had beaten her, she was dubbed “Surly Shirley” and widely criticized. For Babashoff—and for all the clean athletes who’d been shortchanged over the years by others’ steroid use—Schubert and his colleagues wanted this record to fall.
Now, with Piper clocking a 1:59.39 in the second leg, it was within reach. Vollmer, who had gone 1:58.98 and finished sixth in the individual 200 free, stepped it up in the relay, charging home at 1:58.12. As Sandeno, her longtime rival in youth and collegiate swimming, entered the water, Coughlin started to do the math. “We can do this,” she told the other swimmers. “Come on, Kaitlin!”
As Sandeno jetted through the water, it became obvious that the United States would win the gold. Her last lap was a run at history—and Coughlin was bouncing up and down on the edge of the blocks, screaming for every stroke. When Sandeno hit the wall, completing her leg in 1:58.17, all eyes went to the scoreboard clock. The winning time read 7:53.42. The Americans hadn’t just broken the record—they had shattered it. China (7:55.97) and Germany (7:57.35) took the silver and bronze, and Mark Schubert took more satisfaction than most people knew.
“It feels real good to get that record off the books,” he told reporters afterward. “It was the (record) that burned people the most. And we all knew the reason why. We’re very proud to have that record back.”
Coughlin, too, was elated. “Watching her after that relay, it was just pure joy,” McKeever would say later. “When she won the 100 back, it was more like, ‘Thank God that’s over.’ But this was Natalie at her best—part of a team, reveling in the challenge, doing something no one saw coming.”
There was a celebratory atmosphere among the US delegation—but one American swimmer didn’t share her peers’ enthusiasm. Back at the Olympic Village, the swimmer who’d earlier snapped after having been left off the relay took no joy in the news of the gold medal. She once again picked up her cell phone and loudly voiced her displeasure, this time while standing on the balcony of her apartment. Various American and Brazilian athletes and other passersby began to gawk, and a US team psychologist was summoned. That night the swimmer was deemed so volatile that a USA Swimming manager was assigned to sleep outside her door. Part of the fear was that the swimmer would take out her anger on another team member. Meanwhile, her roommate—whose first race was scheduled for the next morning—had to cope with the surreal disruption. Cope, who observed the situation from her own room across the hall, later said: “My attitude was, if someone is sleeping outside (her) door because they feel she’s that much of a threat, she needs to be taken out of there.”
Coughlin, too, had a race the next day—the 100-meter freestyle final. Her medal prospects were looking good because of two developments. First, there was her promising time of 54.37, the third-fastest behind Jodie Henry and Inge de Bruijn, in the previous night’s semifinal, a race in which Coughlin had consciously eased up at the finish. The same could not be said of Henry. In the same heat, the Aussie continued her remarkable Athens run by winning in 53.52—breaking the world record her teammate Libby Lenton had set at the Australian Olympic Trials 5 months earlier.
The second development concerned an even bigger setback, this time for Lenton: The 19-year-old had, shockingly, failed to qualify for the final. After hitting the 50-meter mark in 25.1—“I can’t even go that fast when I’m swimming a 50,” Coughlin later marveled—Lenton faded to fifth in her heat and ended up ninth with a time of 55.17, slower than even her prelim time of 54.89 (just behind Coughlin’s 54.82). Sitting in the Ready Room and watching the other semifinal race play out, Coughlin watched Henry gasp in horror as she saw Lenton’s placing.
Normally, Coughlin would have spent the hours leading up to a race as important as the 100 free final by focusing on the task at hand. Even without Lenton, the race still included the formidable Henry and de Bruijn, as well as other medal threats such as France’s Malia Metella and the United States’ Joyce. Yet on this bizarre day, Coughlin spent most of her waking hours stressing out about the previous day’s drama and what ramifications might follow.
That morning, Schubert had called a team meeting to address the situation. Some swimmers talked about what a privilege it was to represent the United States and the obligation that came with it. Others told the offending swimmer that they loved her and hoped she’d get over her disappointment. Then one decorated veteran registered, in stronger terms, her displeasure with the behavior; the swimmer instantly became defensive, ultimately offering a halfhearted apology for her self-described temper tantrum. The meeting ended without resolution.
Coughlin and most of her teammates wanted the swimmer sent home, but they soon learned that such a penalty was not going to be levied. The coaches said it was out of their hands—that because a US Olympic Team official, the psychologist, had been involved, it was now a USOC issue, and that ruling body was not inclined to force the swimmer to leave Athens. Because of this, Cope, even after having captured a silver medal, would leave Athens with something of a sour taste in her mouth. “It totally ruins the moment for you,” Cope said of the swimmer’s behavior. “The fact that she was allowed to stay, that she wasn’t even fined, was tough to stomach.”
In the hours before the 100 free, Coughlin stewed about the situation. McKeever, who was more keyed in to Coughlin than anyone, started to worry. “Here it was, less than 2 hours before the race, and that was all she could think about,” McKeever said later.
The coach told Coughlin, “Nat, if you feel this strongly, you need to go talk to Mark.”
“Now?” Coughlin asked.
“Yeah, now.”
“It’s not gonna do any good.”
“It’s not about outcome,” McKeever replied. “You need to do this for you, so you can let go and focus on your race. Also, you need to do this for the future. Jenny (Thompson) will be gone after these Games—and you’re going to have to step up and lead. This is part of that process.”
So Coughlin spent 10 minutes with Schubert, voicing all of her frustrations. She didn’t hold back, and when the meeting ended, Schubert thanked her for airing her opinions. Upon returning to the deck, Coughlin told McKeever, “I didn’t intend to be so strong, but I told him everything. I feel so much better.”
Said McKeever afterward: “That was something she needed to do. It’s about her growth, about learning to handle situations.”
A little more than 90 minutes later, Coughlin went out and swam an unfettered 100 free. Rather than distracting her, the meeting with Schubert had actually put her at ease. I’ve already won my gold, Coughlin thought to herself as she stood behind the starting blocks. I just want to swim this race the best I can, and if I get any kind of medal, no matter what happens, I’ll be happy. Mindful that the pressure of the Olympics had perhaps caused many elite swimmers, including herself in the 100 back, to swim somewhat subpar times, she vowed merely to enjoy racing against the world’s best in an event she loved.
Coughlin was in contention all the way, but in the end she was simply overpowered by gold medalist Henry (53.84) and silver medalist de Bruijn (54.16). Like those two, Coughlin, who took the bronze in 54.40—ahead of Metella (54.50) and Joyce (54.54)—was disappointed in her time. She’d gone 0.03 faster in the semis. But in the end, she was as proud of this medal as she would be of any other. This was the race she had wanted to swim, and she had captured a medal despite having gone up against the event’s past three world record holders, in their primes. Whatever she might have accomplished had she chosen the 200 back, she would now have a lifelong keepsake to remind her that doing it her way had paid off.
The bottom line was, she’d competed in four events and won four medals. Now, with 2 days of competition remaining, would begin the drive for five.
In swimming the backstroke leg to lead off the 400 medley relay, Coughlin had a chance for redemption. Having been dissatisfied with her performance in winning the 100 back, she could now show everyone—including French bronze medalist Laure Manadou, who had griped after the race, “I thought I could have gone faster than the American”—how potent in that event she really was.
More important, Coughlin had to get the United States a big lead in a relay in which they looked vulnerable on the back end, with Australia’s Henry set to swim the anchor freestyle leg against Kara Lynn Joyce.
Before that could happen, though, the United States had to qualify. In theory, with the preliminary heats set for the morning of August 20 and the finals not until the following night, Schubert could have gone with his best lineup (Coughlin, breaststroker Amanda Beard, butterflier Thompson, and Joyce) in the prelims. But using other swimmers in the prelims was a way to get them medals—which is why Haley Cope, rather than Coughlin, would swim the backstroke leg. She and three other teammates got the job done, setting up Coughlin, Beard, Thompson, and Joyce for a shot at glory the following night.
For the US women to have a happy ending in their final event of the swimming competition, Coughlin knew she had to set a blistering tone. She figured to beat Australia’s backstroker, Giann Rooney, rather easily, but every hundredth of a second would count.
Yet having already endured the pressure of swimming the event individually, Coughlin was strangely devoid of stress. “I just realized it wasn’t about me,” she later reflected. “I could swim my pace and not worry about being favored to win the gold. It was more about the team, and for some reason that’s always easier for me.”
Easy and breezy, Coughlin was at the full force of her powers. The starting signal sounded, and she darted underwater and took her customary lead. She powered into the turn and built on it, and this time there was no hint of a fade. She hit the wall in 59.68 seconds—just 0.10 off her world record, and the second-fastest time in history. Germany’s Antje Buschulte (1:00.72) was the next-closest swimmer, while Rooney was well back at 1:01.18.
Now the onus was on Beard, the gold medalist in the 200 breast who, 5 days earlier, had finished a disappointing fourth (in 1:07.44) in the individual 100 in Athens. Australia’s Leisel Jones, the world record holder, had finished third (1:07.16) in the same race. This time, Beard came through, building slightly on Coughlin’s lead by edging Jones, 1:06.32 to 1:06.50.
The United States had a lead of nearly 1.7 seconds, but would it be enough? Into the water jumped Thompson, going for her record 12th career Olympic medal. So many times in the past, she had come up huge in relay scenarios, and the first lap of her butterfly was so crisp, it appeared she about to produce another clutch effort. But she faded in the second 50 as Australia’s Petria Thomas—the gold medalist in the individual 100 fly—came charging from behind, catching Thompson before the wall. Thomas had gone 56.67 to Thompson’s 58.81, putting Joyce in the brutal position of having to chase Henry from the outset.
It wasn’t even close. Henry swam her leg in 52.97 seconds—just 0.02 off her anchor split from the 400 free relay, which had been the fastest in recorded history—while Joyce came in at 54.31. The Aussies won another gold and, with a time of 3:57.32, set another world record. The United States (3:59.12) edged Germany (4:00.72) for second, making Coughlin’s final medal tally two golds, two silvers, and a bronze.
McKeever was waiting for the swimmers after the race, and Thompson reached her just before Coughlin. Devastated, Thompson gripped McKeever in a hug and began sobbing on the coach’s shoulder, clinging tightly for more than a minute. It was an awkward moment—McKeever wanted to comfort Thompson but was also eager to congratulate Coughlin, who was waiting off to the side, on what had been an inspiring swim.
When McKeever finally approached her, Coughlin said, “That’s how I needed to swim that race. I’m really happy.”
She had many reasons to be, including the fact that in 2 days she would turn 22. After showering back at the Village, Coughlin did an interview with Bob Costas for NBC’s prime-time coverage; the host, noting Coughlin’s done-up appearance (black lace tank, denim miniskirt), teased her about heading “out into the Saturday night of Athens, Greece, to who knows what adventures.” She, Hall, and their friend Matt, in fact, headed to the Heineken House, where Miller worked her connections to gain the group admittance to a private party. Upon entering, they saw a slew of orange clothing and blond revelers. “It was a Netherlands-only party,” Coughlin recalled later. “We were a little out of place.”
Later, the group relocated to the rocking Sports Illustrated party at the gorgeous Akrotiri nightclub, its outdoor pool deck carved into the banks of the Mediterranean. It was packed with famous athletes and celebrities, and Coughlin was certifiably A-list, even without wearing her gold medal around her neck, as did the US softball players in a curious bit of firefly bravado. Even McKeever, the ultimate teetotaler, had a celebratory drink. Coughlin and her group stayed out well into the early-morning hours, with no impending alarm clock to wake her up. You know, Coughlin thought, I could get used to this.
On the night of her birthday, Coughlin, Hall, Miller, and some other friends had a celebratory dinner. The next night, the group stayed out all night at the Speedo Beach Party, and then Coughlin went straight to the airport for a flight to New York City. Upon landing, she went immediately to Bloomingdale’s and bought an outfit for her appearance on that night’s Late Show with David Letterman, checking into her midtown hotel with only enough time for a shower. Groggy but still glowing, she taped the Letterman interview and continued her whirlwind, still barely able to feel her achievements.
By the time Coughlin returned to earth—or, at least, to Berkeley, where the Cal marching band showed up to perform at her welcome-home press conference—she had come to view her performance in Athens as a largely triumphant one. Certainly, the competitor within was peeved that she hadn’t set world records or won more golds. But everywhere she went, strangers came up and congratulated her on an awesome Olympics, and when she sat back and thought about what she’d done, after how far she’d come, it was hard not to feel gratified.
Not only had Coughlin emerged as the most decorated female swimmer of the Games, but she had also garnered the most medals of any woman in Athens, period. Her five-medal haul matched the most ever by a US woman at a single Olympics, tying swimmers Babashoff (1976) and Dara Torres (2000), gymnasts Mary Lou Retton (1984) and Shannon Miller (1992), and track star Marion Jones (2000).
With two gold medals, two silvers, and a bronze, Coughlin had achieved the best overall performance by an American woman swimmer in Olympic history—and with the Beijing Games 4 years away, she wanted more.
“Everyone says, ‘Wow, you won five medals,’ ” Coughlin said on a late-August afternoon between bites of Thai food in Albany, just north of Berkeley. “I sit there thinking, Wait—I expected five medals. I could have done even better. And maybe in 4 years, if I keep working hard, I will.”