RIO DE JANEIRO – Breaststroke as bloodsport. It’s an unsettling concept.
That’s what we had Monday night, when the women’s
100-meter race in that discipline exploded into a savage geopolitical
bullfight. Across two contentious nights, an exciting showdown between
the world’s two best female breaststrokers morphed into a strident
referendum on PEDs in Olympic sports, with a freckle-faced American
teenager standing her ground and a defeated Russian doper offering
laments and defenses.
When this dramatic, intense, awkward, emotionally
loaded night was over, an Olympic silver medalist departed the swimming
venue sobbing on the shoulder of her coach. Her last words before
leaving the post-race press conference: “This is unfair.” But for
Russian Yulia Efimova, that’s the price of being punished for positive
drug tests, and representing a country steeped in systemic drug
cheating, and lobbying for last-minute inclusion into this competition.
An Olympic gold medalist probably didn’t get the warm afterglow she envisioned. There was a feel-good story to be told,
and nobody was telling it. But for Lilly King, that’s the price for
publicly and unapologetically calling out your drug-using rival –
something she did in comments to NBC Sunday night, stoking a throwback
Cold War furor.
Suddenly this 100 breaststroke wasn’t about who can
swim fastest as much as it was a race for the moral high ground, and a
referendum on the soul of the sport. With side debates on sportsmanship
and candor to top it off.
Everyone comfortable with that?
Lilly King celebrates her win in the 100-meter breaststroke on Monday. (AP)
Silver medalist Efimova, playing the role of
Everything That’s Wrong With The Olympics, was trash-talked Sunday by
King, defeated by King on Monday, booed by the masses, then
cross-examined by the media and ultimately led away in tears. The medal
around her neck must have felt more like an anvil than an award.
Gold medalist King, playing the dual roles of
Clean Sport Avenger and Mean Girl, was given scant opportunity by the
media to savor an incredible climb from a modest club team in
Evansville, Ind., to the top of the Olympic medal stand. Instead the
remarkably frank Indiana University sophomore was asked to expound on
the International Olympic Committee (paraphrase response: I don’t make
the rules, I just work here) and to weigh in on two-time banned American
track sprinter Justin Gatlin’s participation in these Games
(paraphrased response: not a fan).
American bronze medalist Katie Meili, playing
the part of Demilitarized Zone, was strategically placed between the
two antagonists on the interview dais. That was the topper.
Nobody asked a thing about the race, as I recall.
That’s a fascinating story in and of itself –
a triumph of scouting by Indiana coach Ray Looze, and of will by King.
Looze pored over videotape until he discovered a weakness in Efimova’s
fast-finishing race pattern – she was prone to hurrying her smooth
stroke if pressed early and losing her famously fluid rhythm late. So
the plan was hatched for King to attack from the start and apply stress.
“We were going to try to break her early,”
Looze said. “We looked at races when she got beat, and when people took
her into a high-tempo stroke early and she couldn’t finish as well. We
got to that point with 10 meters to go.”
That’s when King pulled away from what looked
like a photo finish, ultimately winning by more than half a second in
Olympic-record time. It was the work of a woman in possession of
incalculable confidence.
“She’s always had that,” Looze said. “When
you first look at that, you might think she’s cocky. But she’s honest,
and that’s who she is. She totally believes in herself. I bet there
wasn’t one doubt in her mind she was going to win that race.”
Of greater interest to the media was King’s
actions after the race. During her exultation after winning gold in Lane
4, she slapped her hand down on the water in Efimova’s Lane 5.
Reporters clucked over that.
And then King bolted the other direction to
embrace teammate Meili and celebrate together. There was no post-race
handshake or congratulations with Efimova. Reporters really clucked at that.
I loved King’s explanation of why she didn’t shake Efimova’s hand.
“If I had been in Yulia’s shoes, I would not
want to be congratulated by someone who did not speak highly of me,”
King said. “If she was wishing to be congratulated, I apologize.”
A lot of other people didn’t love that
explanation. Because this, basically, is what a lot of media people
want: trash talk and bad blood, but it has to be followed by fake
politeness. Especially at the artificially noble Olympics. If the fakery
isn’t there, tsk-tsk.
What fueled the King-Efimova
feud are not new Olympic concepts, of course. Performance-enhancing drug
users have been the scourge of the Games for decades, embittering those
who are trying to win without them.
The difference is that athletes who haven’t tested positive are speaking out like never before.
Why? Because the IOC and World Anti-Doping
Association have failed in their mission to create a level playing
field. When the IOC exacerbated that failure by allowing almost all
non-track Russian athletes into these Olympics – after evidence of
systematic cheating in that country – they opened a rhetorical pandora’s
box. The criticisms of both the system and specific athletes have
flowed freely.
And swimming has been Ground Zero for that.
It began when Australian Mack Horton said
this about Chinese rival Sun Yang after Yang reportedly taunted him in
the warm-down pool: “I don’t have time or respect for drug cheats.” Yang
previously had been suspended for a positive PED test.
“Total props to him for speaking out first,”
King said of Horton – both of whom defeated their tainted opponents. “He
said what everyone was thinking and I said what everyone was thinking.”
And while USA Swimming honchos might have
been squirming in their seats a bit when King sounded off about Efimova –
repeatedly – they did a most unusual thing for athletic coaches and
administrators. They did not muzzle her.
“We were supposed to take the high road,”
said a chuckling Looze, who is also an assistant on the U.S. women’s
team. “But they’re adults, and they have opinions. … Some people aren’t
going to do anything about it, so the athletes are going to rise up.
“Lilly kind of cracked it open. But we all believe the same way. Nobody likes this.”
But after cracking it open, it was King’s job
to shut the door on it by winning the race. She applied plenty of
pressure to herself, and it was time to put up or shut up afterward.
“It would have been really hard [to continue criticizing Efimova],” Looze said. “Then it’s sour apples.”
But King got it done, and how do you like them grapes?
On the medal podium, just before the national
anthem, King held her medal out to look at it and mouthed, “Wow.” After
the song was over – she sang loud and proud – Lilly went into the
stands to hug her parents, Ginny and Mark, and brother, Alex.
After that she toured the pool deck for
photographers, draped in the flag. In the stands, Ginny clasped her
hands against her cheeks and watched a dream come true.
It’s a sweet American success story. But when breaststroke becomes bloodsport, it loses something along the way.
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