Michael
Phelps got smoked by Ryan Lochte and two other guys in the 400m Individual
Medley swim final at the 2012 London Olympic Games, completely missing a medal. You saw it. I saw it. The whole world saw it. Lochte put four seconds on him by the end, on
the same guy who owns the world record in the event. I didn’t get to see much of the Sydney
Olympics, being a college kid without ready access to cable TV at the time,
which was the last time Phelps failed to medal in an event. Watching this Olympics, this Michael Phelps,
I couldn’t help but think that the writing was there on the wall for all of us
to see, but as usual, hindsight tripped my reckoning. The bright comet we cheered for in 2004 and
2008 had vanished, trailing nothing more than the dust of a vaunted
career. That dust emerged from the pool the
other night with the shocked look of a man who didn’t see it coming. Silly, really, if you stop to think about
it. By his own admission, Phelps hadn’t
trained nearly as much for this Olympics as he had for Games in the past, his
motivation was a bit lacking, he wasn’t going full-bore on his swim schedule
this time around, and Lochte had beaten him in the 400 IM up and down the pool
ever since the Beijing Olympics. Still,
Phelps thought he had it in him to stand on the podium once more.
This
is not an isolated occurrence among Sport’s elite.
There’s
this Texan named Lance Armstrong who is a pretty good cyclist. Good enough that Trek Bicycles probably owes
him a lifetime annuity for the amount of revenue he’s generated for the company
by riding its product offerings. All
he’s done is win 7 consecutive Tour de France overall titles, a feat unmatched
by anyone else in history. In 2005, he
retired on top, securing his final title in the French grand tour, riding off
into the sunset of unmatched, forever remembered as being at the pinnacle of
road racing’s best… and then he came back.
Almost immediately, the acrimony between him and his team’s new hotshot,
Spaniard Alberto Contador, flared up.
Leading up to the Tour de France, the speculation around the cycling
world was Lance was going to take the fight to Alberto and ride for
himself. On a mountain stage in 2009,
the type of stage Lance was famous for, he tried to do just that. He set a pace intended to crush the soul of
Contador and all the other hangers-on in the pack, the same thing he had done
to the Jan Ullrichs and Ivan Bassos while in his prime.
Alberto
rode away from him. And then he did it
to Lance again in 2010, riding for a different team.
How
about Michael Jordan and his stint with the Washington Wizards? Who else remembers that? Truth be told, I really remember only three
things about His Airness during those two seasons, and if I hadn’t watched him
play in his prime- all those scoring titles, MVP’s, and championships- I would
have wondered why this guy was such a big deal.
Recollection number 1- Watching him in a Wizards uniform for the first
time, seeing the bags under his eyes, noticing he was a little thicker in the
waist and thinking “When did he get old?”
Number 2- Hearing an ESPN announcer refer to him as “Floor Jordan” in
reference to his diminished leaping ability.
Number 3- This really ties in with Number 2, but seeing Michael blow a
wide open dunk because he had started his jump too far out, the ball clanging
on the back iron and ricocheting back out to nearly half court. I remember him smiling after the miss, but it
seemed as if Jordan was flabbergasted the dunk didn’t go down unlike thousands
of his dunks from seasons before.
This
brings us to the crux of the matter; why do the best athletes not quit when
they are so completely ahead? Phelps has
14 Olympic gold medals in his hip pocket, Lance has his seven Tours, and
Michael his six championships. To a man,
all of their returns signaled nothing more than getting old is inescapable and
youth is fleeting. So why do it? The only thing I can figure is it’s a
combination of a winner’s competitive ego and an extremely short memory. Ego is obvious. Each of my athlete examples possesses the
drive to not only want to win, but to want to win big. They’re used to it,
they love the feeling of domination, and they don’t think it’ll ever end. When they decide they’ve had enough, the
short memory comes into play. All three
athletes basically took the same approach to making their comebacks: Shut it
down for a couple seasons, work themselves back into shape, announce their
return. The problem is, being the best
of the best in a profession is hard, and the game is always changing. That's where the lack of memory comes in.
It
takes an incalculable amount of work behind the scenes to perform above all
others with millions watching throughout the world, and that level of stress is
ultimately unsustainable. It has to
be. If it wasn’t, Michael would have
stayed with the Bulls and won a couple more championships after the lockout
season, Lance could have made it eight, nine, or perhaps ten Tours in a row, and Phelps wouldn’t have got photographed
smoking pot (no big deal in the grand scheme of things, other than it was an
early indicator that he wasn’t in the right headspace to continue his ownage of
his opponents) and done that whole Hamlet-esque
“Is this really still for me?/ Should I or shouldn’t I?” routine. Meanwhile, others were stepping up. Kobe Bryant realized his potential. Ryan Lochte buckled down so hard on his
training that he looks like he could chew nails and shit steel. And Contador?
Well, I told you about him. And
while these new superstars are putting the world on notice, the old guard is
sitting in a gym, or on a trainer, or in the pool, convincing themselves that
their natural talent and competitive drive will overcome gaps in their
conditioning and rust from their sporting hibernation. They’ve forgotten what freeride mountain
biker Darren Barrecloth put so eloquently in the action sports movie Seasons: “It takes a little bit of
talent and a whole lot of determination to get to where you want to be.” That determination manifests itself in Lochte
flipping 650lb truck tires, Contador flying up a hill, and Bryant working
endlessly on both sides of the court, even as it fades in Phelps, Lance, and
Michael.
Time
waits for no man, but these three champions would swear it waits for them. As fans, I think we fall into a similar trap
by almost irrationally expecting generational superstars to remain at the top
even as their prime wanes. I’m probably
guiltier than most. I certainly couldn’t
have foreseen Phelps missing the podium in a discipline he once owned, and I believed
it was very possible Lance was going to put time into Contador as soon as a
mountain stage came about in the Tour.
Ultimately, the signs of an athlete’s diminished greatness are always
there, but we have to choose to read them.
Here’s
hoping Phelps takes it to Lochte and the rest of the world one last time anyway.
Scotty
Mac
"But what you've done here/ Is
put yourself between a bullet and a target/ And it won't be long before/ You're
pulling yourself away" ~Citizen Cope
