No Limits Read Online Free PDF Page A

the first people I wanted to see when I had a quiet moment were my mom and my sisters.
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    They say that what the decathlon is to track and field, the 400 individual medley is to swimming.
    Most swimmers, like the vast majority of those who compete in track and field, are specialists. They do the backstroke, for instance. Or the breaststroke. That’s not to say they don’t know how to swim the other strokes. They do. But once they get to a certain age, they usually compete only in the one they’re best in.
    That’s why the IM is tough. You have to do all four strokes, and do them all well.
    The 400 IM is tougher still because it’s all four strokes and at distance. It requires strength, endurance, technique, and versatility.
    This race can make you hurt bad. Your shoulders start to burn. Your legs ache. You can’t get a breath. The pain is sometimes dull, throbbing. It’s like your body isn’t even in the unbelievably great shape it’s in. All you want is for the pain to stop.
    Who’s the mentally toughest? That’s what the 400 IM is all about.
    I had won the 400 IM at the 2003 championships in Barcelona in what was then a world-record time, 4:09.09.
    A year later, as I got ready to get into the pool for the 400 IM Olympic final in Athens, Rowdy Gaines, himself an Olympic champion in 1984, now an NBC analyst, was saying that this was the race that was going introduce America to Michael Phelps.
    I knew well the recent Olympic history of the event: Americans had gone 1–2 in the 400 IM in 1996 and in 2000. Dolan had won in Atlanta in 1996; Eric Namesnik, another Michigan man, had gotten silver. In 2000, Dolan repeated as Olympic champion; Erik Vendt, who had grown up in Massachusetts and gone to the University of Southern California, took silver.
    Lining up that Saturday evening in Athens, I was in Lane 4, Vendt in Lane 1.
    I have since watched the video of this race dozens of times,maybe hundreds. It’s the one race that, from the eight days of competition in Athens, still stands out most to me.
    After the butterfly leg, I led by more than a second; after the back, more than three, more than two body lengths ahead. The breaststroke had long been the weakest of my strokes. It was imperative on this leg that I not give up ground. I didn’t.
    100 meters to go. I turned and started doing the free.
    50.
    The swimmers who swim the fastest in the heats are assigned in the finals to the middle lanes. The advantage of swimming in the middle is that it’s easier to keep an eye on what everyone else is doing. Coming off the last wall, I saw that Alessio Boggiatto of Italy in Lane 3 was still approaching his turn; in Lane 5, Hungary’s Laszlo Cseh was not yet at the wall, either.
    I still had that one lap to go.
    But I knew already that I had won.
    And so, underwater, I smiled.
    Not even a half-minute later, I glided into the wall, and I was still smiling.
    I popped up and looked for Mom in the stands. Even before I looked at the scoreboard, I looked for Mom, and, there she was, standing next to Whitney and Hilary, all of them cheering and just going crazy. I turned to look at the clock. It said, “WR,” meaning world record, next to my name. 4:08.26. I raised my arm into the air.
    I had done it.
    I had won the Olympic gold medal I had been dreaming of since I was little.
    I had also, in that instant, become the first American gold medalist of the 2004 Athens Games.
    I really didn’t know what to do, or say, or think.
    â€œMike! Mike!”
    It was Vendt. He was swimming over from Lane 1. Truthfully,in the excitement of the moment, I hadn’t noticed yet that he had finished second. We had gone 1–2. Cseh had finished third.
    In finishing second, Vendt had carried on one of the quirkiest streaks in Olympic history. Four Games in a row an American named Erik or Eric had finished second in the 400 IM; Namesnik had taken silver in