An NYAC Medal Bonanza

Yesterday may have been the official opening of these Olympic Games – even though some events had already taken place – but, in reality, today is Day One. This is the day on which competition kicks into high gear and on which the intensity goes from level one to level 101; where, for many athletes, all of their Olympic dreams can come true, or the work of a lifetime comes undone, the victim of a momentary lapse. That is the terrible beauty of competition, magnified one thousand fold when the eyes of the world are on you, such as they are at the Olympic Games.

The eyes of the world were on the La Défense Arena this evening, that being the venue for the Olympic swimming competition and the first opportunity during these Olympic Games in which NYAC athletes could strike for gold.

Allow me to make a correction. The real first opportunity for hardware came during this afternoon’s women’s cycling time trial for which, remarkably, the Club’s Taylor Knibb, a triathlete first and foremost, had qualified and in which she was a powerful medal contender. Without question, Knibb is a remarkable athlete and a ferocious competitor, facts made evident by her ability to qualify for two sports in the same Olympics, an almost unprecedented feat. To reach such heights courts a significant element of risk – of injury, of burnout, of illness, of unforeseen elements that can derail the best laid plains; this is the currency with which an athlete of this caliber deals.

So it was for Knibb today. It rained, as it had unceasingly since yesterday evening when it teemed upon the tens of thousands along the Seine watching the Opening Ceremony. For cyclists at full intensity, rain means more than just getting wet. It renders surfaces treacherous. Two riders ahead of Knibb wiped out on the ice-slick roads. The NYAC woman did so three times, to the point that she damaged her bike and had to be delivered a spare mid-race. Making a bad situation worse, the tech delivering the bike from the support vehicle also slipped and fell. Thankfully, the bike was OK. Oh right; yes, thankfully, the tech, too.

The upshot was that Knibb’s hopes of a remarkable Olympic medal-winning double were dashed; she placed 19th in a time of 43:03.46 to the winning 39:38.24 of Australia’s Grace Brown. This does nothing, of course, to dull the patina of the fact that Knibb had qualified for two different sports in the same Olympic Games, an almost unheard of accomplishment. That was not done without mettle.

“I wanted to have the best race possible,” the NYAC woman commented, her legs bruised and bloodied from the falls. “You can only control what you can control. My race was going well, and then it wasn’t. I am just grateful to be standing and still walking. The first third was great. The middle one, that’s where it all went wrong. The third one was more survival than anything else. I was fully blind. My Garmin fell off on the first [fall], so I was like, ‘Well, here we go.’ One thing I have learned in my triathlon career and my brief time trial career is that I love learning. That makes me hungry.”

If you want to know what a competitor looks like, take a picture of Taylor Knibb. She goes in her primary event, the triathlon, on Wednesday (July 31st).

That was the heartbreak; what about the heroes? They came in the aforementioned La Défense Arena; more specifically, in the swimming pool of that venue, where no fewer than four NYAC members were in action, one in a semi (Nic Fink in the men’s 100m breaststroke) and three in finals: Paige Madden in the women’s 400m freestyle, Kate Douglass in the women’s 4x100m freestyle and Hunter Armstrong in the men’s 4x100m freestyle.

Fink got the job done in perfunctory fashion, securing a comfortable second place (59.16) behind Great Britain’s world record holder, Adam Peaty (58.86). The final of that event goes tomorrow (Sunday, July 28th) at 3:44pm EST.

In the women’s 400m FS, Madden contested powerfully for medals early on, but ultimately placed a still valiant sixth in a time of 4:02.26, to the winning 3:57.49 of Australia’s Ariarne Titmus.

There is something about relays that always lights the fire, even if you’re not rooting for anybody in particular. Relays are thrillers, especially so this evening in the pool, as the NYAC had representatives in both finals of the women’s and men’s 4x100m freestyle. Given that these athletes are swimming as fast as many people can run – just watch the judges at poolside – it is understandable that the events are rife with competitive tension.

In the women’s race, Kate Douglass, a denizen of the Travers Island pool, was the athlete on whom all NYAC attention was focused. She did not disappoint, taking the lead-off leg and setting the team up for a magnificent silver medal, 1.28 seconds down on the winning team from Australia (3:28.92 to 3:30.20). Douglass is also contesting the 100m freestyle, the 200m breaststroke and the 200m IM. Do we smell more metal in the water?