Allen StarkI know politics is off limits, but I am posting this as a sad situation regarding a swimmer. Take it as you will
https://www.aol.com/sports/usopc-iss...192511691.html
I know politics is off limits, but I am posting this as a sad situation regarding a swimmer. Take it as you will
https://www.aol.com/sports/usopc-iss...192511691.html
"To strive,to seek,to find,and not to yield" Tennyson
Allen
My college coach always told his swimmers... "Don't do stupid stuff!" Mostly, he didn't want us to harm ourselves physically in season, but I think he would have also frowned on this.
Did your college coach also say, "and if you are going to do stupid stuff, at least have the common sense to not wear your team jacket while doing it..." LOLOriginally Posted by Redbird Alum
That's right up there with the man who had his work ID around his neck.
And if you do - call the police and say "Hey! That's me in the photo!"
And Klete had the added "bonus" of being at least half a foot taller than most everybody else there!That's right up there with the man who had his work ID around his neck.
400 IMer/200 backstroker in another life, now sprinter/breaststroker... Yeah, I don't know how that happened either!
I thought swimming was a "liberal sport".
(Too much?)
PRs: 25m-16.0/50m-34.75/100m-1:17.0/200m-2:55.5/400m-6:14/800m-12:50/1600m-26:37
2021 dream: 15.8/34.2/1:16.2/2:48.4/5:59/12:31/25:33
There is a story today in the Guardian about Klete. Apparently he has had some rough times following his swimming career- including living in his car for a period.
I have known other Olympians who seemed to have a hard time moving from a life where they were on a pedestal overlooking the masses to just one of the many. I don't think this is an excuse for his actions, but it may add some context for understanding it.
A quote from Klete in the story describes his difficulties:
“I felt when I failed a much more acute sense of pain and frustration and failure than I did with swimming. With swimming it was just me. All those years of success I had with swimming really gave me an inaccurate expectation of the world and so it was much harder to cope with the mini-failures I’d experience on any given day.”
He added: “I think I became a real lazy, spoiled, entitled person, just because I didn’t have the coping skills. You would think all the lessons I’d learnt in swimming would immediately transfer but it really takes a lot of work to figure out exactly how to transfer athletic lessons into real life lessons - how to put a bad day behind you in the working world.”
Another quote from the article about the difficulty that top tier athletes can have after retirement:
“To find something else that is that important, to move on to the next rung of life that you find as compelling and worth working as hard for, it’s just not an easy transition for anybody,” said Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a three-time Olympic swimming gold medallist, lawyer and founder of Champion Women, an equality and accountability advocacy group.
She believes that Keller’s fall underscores the need for greater assistance for athletes from all backgrounds. Especially in a sport such as swimming they might become famous for a couple of weeks every four years and be lionised as national heroes, but risk slipping back into the shadows and suffering in obscurity with scant financial security or emotional support.
“What would cause them to have mental health issues and what can we do? How can we change governance and structure so that this person can get the help that we need?” The attention on Keller, she said, could help act as a catalyst for change, “a big ‘aha!’ opportunity moment”.
Eli Bremer, who competed for the US in the modern pentathlon in Beijing, knows Keller but has not spoken with his fellow Colorado Springs resident since the incident. “I don’t want to say that the history that Klete’s been quite open about and the struggles he’s had led into what happened in Washington DC because I don’t know,” he said.
“However, I think that his overall story does shine a light on saying: these athletes are American heroes and then a lot of them do struggle afterwards with learning how to find jobs, learning how to cope with the emotional side of retiring from sports and oftentimes being a decade behind your peers. That can cause issues with your personal life, with your family, it can cause professional issues, it can cause a lot of psychological issues.”
Being “liberal” does not categorize someone to the left, and being a swimmer doesn’t mean they won’t do something stupid
I feel it is worth pondering how generalizable these comments are. My initial thought is that this is not really about swimming per se. I have taught many students for whom academic success in high school came maybe too easily, and some of them had a lot of difficulty transitioning to college studies where (in my field at least) very few can get by without developing disciplined work habits. Certainly Keller would have to work hard to get a gold medal in swimming but based on some of his comments it doesn’t seem like he had to deal with many setbacks and that success in swimming came fairly easily to him, more so than in other fields.
Haha, you just described me. In the top few percent in HS, despite working up to 60 horus a week and doing all my homework in other classes. Then went to Ga Tech to study engineering.....was NOT prepared. Took me 2 years to learn how to study - my GPA went from 2.3 for first 2 years to 3.3 for last ones. I was fortunate that I didn't fail out, as back them (90's), Tech's retention rate was on par with the Academies.
All that said, I have observed that at the age group level, there are three types of successful swimmers: 1) Natural athletes - kids just jump in and can swim and are fast. 2) Physical specimens - those who tower over their peers. 3) Those who work hard - those with neither 1 nor 2, but want to swim fast, so they learn how to work hard.
I think most Olympians are all 3, but some are not. Recall a backstroker in the book "Gold in the Water" who just got in and swam faster tahn anyone, but didn't have to work. Can't recall who. Ed Moses took up swimming at 17, won a gold medal. I think he is a #1. Keller certainly is #2, none of us knwo abotu 1 or 3.
But I think a lot of it is that people find purpose in some pursuits. Athletes in their chosen fields are an easy example. Depression among former college athletes is a really big problem. We've all read about Missy Franklin and Michael Phelps. But it happens in all sports. And it happens in other things, too. People lose their job, or their job gets offshored, how many of them can't cope? Suicide rates are highest among white men in their 40's, which overlaps very solidly with the demographics of those who have lost their jobs/careers due to circumstances beyond their control, and are seen as too old to hire in a new field.
All that said, I'm not sure I can tie depression to freakin' insurrection. I certainly know it is complicated, but I don't want to say any more, or I'll get on a political rant.
True.
If I can put my slightly tongue-in-cheek comment another way, from my experience with other swimmers, I would be willing to bet that a very small percentage of them would support Trump/Trumpism.
Unlike golf or NASCAR!!
PRs: 25m-16.0/50m-34.75/100m-1:17.0/200m-2:55.5/400m-6:14/800m-12:50/1600m-26:37
2021 dream: 15.8/34.2/1:16.2/2:48.4/5:59/12:31/25:33
Geography, from my experience, has a whole lot more to do with it than anything else. I was a right wing yahoo compared to my surroundings when I lived in Ann Arbor. I'm a left wing yahoo compared to my surroundings here in Knoxville. As for swimming.....the kids' Club team is overwhelmingly right leaning, and thereby support Trump because he is the current face of the GOP. Now the open water group is the opposite. Most verbal folks are pretty far to the left, and no one, even the conservative types, supports Trump. So who knows.
That said, I thought the joke was kind of funny, and I didn't read it as political.
Yeah, my decades on The Left Coast colours my view, perhaps. Kool-Aid is in short supply here.
PRs: 25m-16.0/50m-34.75/100m-1:17.0/200m-2:55.5/400m-6:14/800m-12:50/1600m-26:37
2021 dream: 15.8/34.2/1:16.2/2:48.4/5:59/12:31/25:33
Or, just a different flavor.Yeah, my decades on The Left Coast colours my view, perhaps. Kool-Aid is in short supply here.
Follow my blogs at http://www.1001pools.com and http://forums.usms.org/blog.php?u=5013
Or does the pool water mellow most of us??
I think you are right. You see the same types of failures in other areas. I see it sometimes with the children of wealthy or successful clients who seem to be ill prepared to succeed on their own.
Growing up in a life of never hearing "no" or "you can't have that" or "always winning" might lead you to believe that this is "normal"
I've read a few articles about Keller's situation and his past, but I don't quite understand how it would be a prelude to winding up a MAGA acolyte and taking it all the way to breaking into the U.S. Capitol Building. Or, maybe I'm digging too deep and it's all just about a history of poor decision making when he is away from something as demanding as swimming.
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