No Limits Read Online Free PDF

1992 as well.
    â€œYeah, Vendt! Yeah!” I shouted. “Yeah! We did it!”
    I could not stop smiling.
    â€œSo proud of you,” Bob said.
    â€œIt felt great,” I replied.
    A little while later the top three finishers were called to the medals stand. An olive wreath went onto my head, the gold medal around my neck. The American flag went up, along with another for Vendt’s silver and the Hungarian flag for Cseh’s bronze. The “Star-Spangled Banner” began to play. I took the wreath off my head. The right thing to do is to take a hat off your head for the anthem; maybe a wreath was the same.
    As I listened to the anthem, playing for me, for my country, my eyes grew moist. Even so, I could not stop smiling.
    I had done it.
    After warming down, I grabbed my cell phone.
    When Mom and my sisters go to meets, Hilary is the keeper of the phone.
    â€œWhere are you guys?” I asked her.
    â€œWe’re over by a fence, behind you. They’re going to kick us out.”
    â€œHold on. I want to see you guys. Meet at the gate.”
    Bob went with me, along with a doping official who was doing his official thing, just keeping an eye on me as he was supposed to do. Nothing untoward, nothing unusual about it. I walked toward the fence, my gold medal around my neck. My mom didn’t see Bob or the doping guy. She just saw me. To my mom it looked like I was ten, back at Meadowbrook. I had mygold medal around my neck and, in her mind’s eye, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my hand.
    I put the medal through the fence and said, “Look, Mom. Look what I did.”
    â€¢   •   •
    That 400 IM in Athens was, as I see it, the turning point. I was nineteen. I had my first Olympic gold. My mom and sisters were there to watch—that was, to me, what meant so much.
    I did not go on to win eight gold medals in Athens. I won six. Eight overall, six gold, two bronze.
    On the one hand, the Athens Olympics were an extraordinary success for me. I had met the original goal and gone well beyond.
    On the other, I did not meet all my expectations.
    Thus I had ample motivation to keep swimming, keep pushing myself. Beijing was four years away. That’s a long time. And yet not.
    Because stuff happens.
    In the fall of 2004, I had major worries about my back.
    A year later, I broke a bone in my hand.
    In 2008, two years after that, I broke my wrist.
    So many newspaper, magazine, and website stories have been written about me that sometimes it seems almost everything about me has been well documented.
    But not everything.
    I was so worried about my back in 2004: It turned out I had a small stress fracture, and needed rest. There were times I would be in Bob’s office feeling broken down physically and emotionally. Whitney had endured back problems that seriously affected her career. I was scared and worried. Plenty scared, seriously worried.
    I can’t emphasize enough how, during all this, Bob was there for me. This is the side of him that doesn’t get depicted often in all the stories that have been written about us, which tend to focus onhow it’s his way or the highway; this was the side that reminded me why I would never swim for any other coach. Bob made it plain how much he cared. He stayed positive. He sought, time and again, to reassure me. He would say, you’re fine, we’re going to get through this, we’re going to get your back taken care of, it’s all going to work out. Which, ultimately, it did.
    Later, in the fall of 2005, the first week of November, I was hanging out in Ann Arbor with a bunch of swimmers. I was not in a very good state of mind. I don’t remember why. Boys will be boys, I guess.
    In fact, I don’t recall very much about the entire thing except that we were at this guy’s house and I hit something with my right hand—maybe a post, maybe a wall. I don’t even remember why I hit it. I’m not