The Rich Roll Podcast - Anthony Ervin: The Rebel Olympian on Chasing Water, Finding Meaning in Gold & The Search For Authenticity

Episode Date: July 11, 2016

Imagine winning an Olympic gold medal in swimming at age 19 at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. A feat never-before achieved by a swimmer of African-American descent, the frenzied media swarms. The only problem? You’re only half-black. You definitely don’t look black. And you know nothing about what it’s like to be part of the black experience. The unrelenting crush of public expectation to fulfill a role at odds with your private sense of self becomes so intense, you retreat from your Olympic experience not with any lasting sense of happiness, satisfaction and pride, but rather a numb confusion. This isn’t anything like I thought it would be… Over time, the confusion metastasizes into disillusionment. And it’s not long before depression sets in. Lost and lacking the tools to cope, life begins to pivot away from the dreaded black line at the bottom of the pool and towards a dreadlocked blur of rock ‘n roll, boozy, drug-fueled binges, rampant womanizing, cigarette haze, and death-defying motorcycle crashes. Nonetheless, over the next three years you continue to do the one thing you know how to do: swim. Not only do you continue to win, in 2001 you’re crowned the world champion in two events. But these results only magnify what is quickly becoming a profound crisis of identity. Who am I? Why am I doing this? What does it all mean? The answers continue to elude you until you find yourself so despondent, so desperate for relief, that you down a handful of tranquilizers. But the suicide attempt fails, fueling a sense of invincibility that only hastens the onset of an even more profound darkness. So, at the young age of 22, at the peak of his abilities, Anthony Ervin does what he has to — he walks away from the thing he used to love. The thing that gave him everything. The thing that made him a star. The thing that betrayed it’s promise of making him whole. In a Hail Mary attempt to discover and re-create his life, Anthony travels the world. He meditates at a Buddhist temple. He studies philosophy with a Sufi mystic. He reclaims his body with tattoos. He enrolls in graduate school but spends summers in Brooklyn, where he immerses himself in books, writes poetry, and even occasionally cross-dresses at parties. The denouement? Hawking his Olympic gold medal on eBay and donating the proceeds to the UNICEF tsunami relief fund. The only thing Anthony Ervin didn’t do during this time? Swim. Not one stroke. The next eight years marked a complete divorce from anything and everything swimming. In fact, not one of Anthony’s new friends during this time had any idea he was even an athlete, let alone an Olympic champion. He was just another tattooed, guitar-playing Brooklynite seeking answers to the Universe in music, meditation, books and partying. But with funds dwindling, Anthony offhandedly takes a gig teaching New York kids how to swim. The experience of service begins to erode his jaded shell and ignites an unexpected spark of appreciation for his former life. A new sense of self worth begins to emerge, informing the why in Anthony’s quest for spiritual self-actualization. Suddenly, love for the sport he so thoroughly placed in his rearview begins to rekindle. In 2011, Anthony returns to the water. And almost overnight, the impossible occurs. Twelve years after Sydney, Anthony qualifies for the 2012 London Olympics — his second U.S. Olympic team. Despite his 31 years of age (ancient in the world of swi...

I always liked that Latin phrase, tabula rasa, the blank slate, you know, because nobody, nobody ever really has a blank slate. And, you know, I tried, I tried my best to create one for myself, but everybody's thrown into this universe with some kind of past history, their family. And as a child, you know, you do things that aren't necessarily your choices and you, you know, there's a certain momentum to everything. And a lot of times your choices are you you know there's a certain momentum to everything and a lot of times uh your choices are just about steering in a particular direction or not but you can't really change directions that's olympic gold medalist anthony irvin and this is the rich roll podcast the rich roll podcast The Rich Roll Podcast.

Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? What's going on? What is happening? Greetings. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. Welcome to The Rich Roll Podcast, the show where each week, of course, I sit down with all kinds of wildly inspiring people, thought leaders, paradigm breakers, doctors, filmmakers, authors, advocates, Olympic athletes, in the case of today's guest, and even the occasional everyman. And I do this across all categories of health and wellness, everything from fitness to food, entrepreneurship, athletic performance, creativity, and of course, positive social change. And my hope really is that these conversations will somehow serve you in your journey towards

unlocking and unleashing your best, most authentic self. So I've got a really interesting, different kind of show for you guys today. Today's guest is a U.S. Olympic gold medalist. He is a three-time Olympian. He made his first Olympic team at the age of 19 and his most recent just a few weeks ago at age 35. It's incredible. He's a former world record holder in the 50 freestyle and a former world champion in the 50 and 100 meter freestyle events. That's competitive swimming for the uninitiated out there. Anthony Irvin is a sprinter's sprinter. This is a guy who is just gifted with pure speed, a guy who is arguably

the greatest or at a minimum among the very greatest sprint talents in the history of competitive swimming. And his accomplishments are extraordinary, of course, but they're not really what makes him interesting to me. What's interesting to me is the amazing personal story behind one of the most unique, one of the most introspective, and I think it's fair to say one of the most complicated world-class athletes of our time. And I got a whole bunch more I want to say about Anthony in a second. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety.

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So let's take it back to the year 2000, the Sydney Olympics. At age 19, this young half-black, half-Jewish kid named Anthony Irvin, who also happens to suffer from Tourette's syndrome, bursts onto the scene and shocks the swimming world by winning an Olympic gold medal in the 50-meter freestyle, and thereby becoming the fastest man on the planet and the very first African-American to win gold. And this is a title that would soon begin to haunt him for reasons we're going to get into in the podcast. In any event, over the next three years, Anthony goes on to win two world championships, seven NCAA titles for Berkeley, and a whole host of additional amazing

accolades. So this is an athlete for whom the future is indeed looking bright and brighter every single day. But then at the very peak of his career at the young age of 22, when he's still improving and getting faster and aiming towards another Olympic Games, Anthony shocks the swimming world a second time by retiring out of the blue. This is something that no athlete does who's still on the rise. It just doesn't happen. But Anthony is like this free-spirited guy. He's an independent deep thinker, sort of a beat poet kind of character trapped in the body of a once-in-a-generation athlete. Anthony had just become disillusioned with sport. He

started questioning what he was doing, why he was doing it. He started questioning everything about his life and decided to spend the next several years on this sort of spirit quest. He traveled the world. He had a stint living in Brooklyn for a period of time playing in a rock band. He was experimenting with a lot of drugs. He was chain smoking, getting a lot of tattoos, crashing his motorcycle. You get the idea. This is a guy who even hawked his gold medal on eBay to raise funds for tsunami flood relief. But the one thing he didn't do was swim, not a single stroke. In fact, none of the people he was hanging out with even knew that he was an athlete, let alone an Olympic gold medalist. Then after an eight-year retirement from the sport, which is literally a lifetime in swimming years, Anthony jumps back into the pool

around 2011 and once again shocks the swimming world for a third time by making the London Olympic team in 2012 in the 50-meter freestyle. So let me put things in perspective. This is yet another thing that just doesn't happen, like ever. This is a sport in which athletes are afraid to even take a couple weeks off, let alone years. So Anthony's story is just awe-inspiring in this regard. And, of course, it's a testament to his amazing talent. But to me, it's more about his spirit.

It's more about the emotional journey that has delivered him from that place to here. And to really punctuate all of this, just last week at the age of 35, as the oldest competitor at the United States Swimming Olympic Trials, Anthony punched his ticket to Rio by taking second place in the 50 free. He lost that race by just one one-hundredth of a second behind Nathan Adrian, and he did it in a time faster than the time he swam at the Olympic Trials in both 2000 and 2012. Like, how does that even make sense?

He also locked a spot on the 4x100 free relay by placing fourth in the 100-meter free. So this performance in these two races just a couple weeks ago shocked the swimming world again for a fourth time. This is a guy who's now made three Olympic teams, his first Olympic team at 19 and just the other week at age 35. This achievement is just so amazing. I almost feel like you have to be or have been a swimmer to truly appreciate it. It just doesn't compute. The word extraordinary doesn't do it justice.

I followed Anthony's career for many years. He's always been a very interesting and colorful person to follow. And I was really touched when I read his book that came out a couple months ago. It's a memoir, it's called couple months ago. It's a memoir. It's called Chasing Water. It's completely unlike any sports memoir I've ever read.

It's wholly original, very inventive and unique in its style, complete with black and white drawings and this graphic story extra, something I've never seen in a memoir before. before, and also in the way that it tells this really kind of surprising and provocative journey that Anthony has taken to becoming what I think is one of the most interesting, dynamic, multifaceted, and perhaps complicated Olympic heroes of our day, our era. So it was really something to spend the better part of a day with him several months ago and record this conversation. But here's the thing. I wasn't actually going to air this conversation. Anthony is just so remarkable.

And I felt like I didn't do the greatest job of getting the best and the most out of him in this conversation. And that's a responsibility that rests squarely on my shoulders. It has nothing to do with him. Also, we had a few tech issues with the recording, not the least of which was that it just cuts off about two-thirds into the conversation, leaving only a portion of the conversation itself.

Literally a third of what we talked about just disappeared. This has never happened before. It hasn't happened since. I did everything to try to recover it. I don't know what happened. The file got corrupted or something. In any event, that's a bummer, right? So for these reasons, I asked Anthony before Olympic trials if he'd be willing to do a do-over, which is something I've never done before. It's not something I do. I have these conversations and I put them up,

warts and all, no matter how they sound. But in this particular case, it seemed to make the most sense for obvious reasons. And Anthony agreed. He said, no problem. Let's definitely do it. Then he did what he did last week at Olympic trials. And now I just I can't imagine not sharing this. I mean, first of all, there's no way I'm going to be able to sit down with Anthony again until sometime after the Olympics. So I'm going to have to wait a considerable period of time. And second, and most important, I want all of you guys, the audience, to know who this guy is going into Rio so that you

can watch him and cheer for him with a better idea of the person behind the story, behind the tattoos. And I think all of you guys are ultimately, after listening to this, going to become rabid fans of Anthony Irvin. So there you have it. My apologies for this not being a perfect recording or a perfect interview. My apologies for the tech issues, for just cutting out in mid-thought and leaving everyone hanging. That part really stinks. It just is what it is, right? I could air it or I could not air it, but I'd rather share it and have you guys enjoy

it for what it is. And my hope is that you'll just get a better idea of who Anthony is and why I wanted to share his journey with you guys. And I promise I will get Anthony back in here after Rio to recap his Olympic experience, his Olympic trials experience, and cover what got cut out in the recording that you're about to hear and complete the circle, so to speak. So at its core, this is a conversation that's really less about sport than it is about duality. It's about sport versus life. It's about public versus private identity, balance versus exceptionalism. It's about self-preservation versus self-destruction,

ego versus humility, service versus selfishness, attachment versus surrender. And it's also about heritage and race and identity and priorities. And ultimately, at the end of the day, it's about what is truly important. With all that said, please enjoy this first conversation with my friend, Anthony Irvin. You were just with Michael? I was. Oh man, he's the best. He was. I love that guy. I told him that I was coming up here and he just like stopped oh yeah i got into this because of rich roll oh that's so cool yeah he's uh he's a special guy do you work with him no not until um recently where ariana kukers i was talking with her i did a couple a couple clinics with her and just talking to her and she's like oh you know you should meet him i work with him all the time we should have him on for a podcast so i'm like yeah that's great his show is fantastic um i had him on my podcast a while it was probably like two years ago maybe a year and a half ago at

this point but i just it was just a fantastic conversation and then he starts emailing me he's like hey how does all this podcasting stuff work? And I was like, you should do it. I mean, because he's such a, he's so intuitive and inquisitive and thoughtful and conscientious. Like, I just think it's a great medium for him. And his show is like taken off. So, that's really cool that you did it. You all right, man? Choking on a banana. Bananas revenge.

So, you did that today you did that today uh-huh so you're not going to be podcast burned out no no this is i mean he was really good i like the way he just he steered questions and the way he kind of he couches for his audience right you know finding mastery and that's the that's the thing and whether i spoke to mastery at all very much uh i'll leave that up to the to the listeners to decide but it was it was a good situation and i know that you're bringing a totally different thing so i know it's going to be a totally different conversation yeah we'll see how it goes and and i and i believe you actually looked

at the book you may yeah i read the book i read the book I'm almost done. I have still, I didn't, the only part I haven't really gotten to is the graphic story at the end. Oh, the appendices? Yeah, so I have to read that. I'm savoring it. But this book is, I mean, this is an amazing book, dude. You did a really great job. And there's so many things i want to say about it but i think you know first and foremost i would say that in general i'm not a huge fan of like

athlete memoirs or autobiographies they tend to be sort of boring they're generally written with the idea of extending like a brand you know in the in the twilight of an athlete's career and they're rarely honest or vulnerable but your book really is all of that like it's incredibly um revealing and interesting in the way that it's uh assembled because it's almost like like a hallucinogenic trip you know what i mean it's not really linear it is it isn't. Like you go on these tangents and then it goes back and forth between your recollections and snippets from your life

that aren't necessarily sort of logically oriented. They're more like ruminations mashed up against your co-writer's sort of more methodical approach to kind of plotting through your life. And it's super interesting and all the art that's interspersed with, you know, your tattoos. And it's very literary as well, which I was surprised. I mean, I guess not surprised knowing

like your background and kind of your persona and all of that. But I just, I was gripped by it. And it's really a fantastic read. So, congratulations, man. Yeah, there was, there definitely was a conscientious effort to steer away from what would be considered a traditional athlete, like biography or memoir. And, you know, Constantine, my co-author, you know, he feels the same way. And we really thought that if we're going to do it, let's, let's be creative with it. And yes, I am honest and vulnerable, but I mean, to be fair, I pick my battles, right? You know, there were some things I'm like, I can't, I'm not going anywhere near that. And then I completely got left out, you

know? So, yeah, I think the, one of the articles that I read in preparation for this was the vice piece, which I know was really fun. That was great article. And, and, uh, you were kind of defending that. It's not, it's a, it's a tell a lot, but it's not a tell all. Yeah. No one, you know, no one wants to hear it. It becomes a tell all. I was like, nobody wants to hear it. That's really just for me at that point. Right. Well, also when there's other people that are implicated. Yeah. That became a big concern. You know, that, that was probably my greatest worry when, uh uh the bulk of the research was done and we're like we're writing it section by section and then when we had a full first draft of just no there was a certain comfort or acceptance of nailing myself up for a lot of things but i

didn't want anybody else it's not my right to do that to anybody else so trying to protect certain people became important contacting them and letting finding out what their limits were um and then you know stopping there and then for others if if there was no contact or i just didn't want to go through it right their anonymity was somewhat preserved right well you have there's one girlfriend in there that just goes by k yeah so i put that and i'm sure were there were there did you send sections to people and say hey listen i'm thinking about putting this in and they're just like no way um no actually everybody for whom it went in there where they might not have known

where they they drew a hard line it was before you know the prose had been written right no because we you know we we had design and then from there we know we filled in the prose and we decided upon style for each section and whatnot and that was only the only places i really kind of got disappointed where i wanted some more that wasn't given was my parents they were just like there were places where they're like no right yeah and. They didn't want it. And I respect that, you know. Yeah. When I wrote my book, my mom was terrified. My mom was terrified too.

And then I sent it to her. I let her read the section about her earlier on, way before it went to the final draft was done. And she kind of got like really silent and introspective when usually, you know she she marches around the house with a wooden spoon like it's a scepter because she's in control she kind of like sat and got quiet and didn't say anything for the rest of the time i was at home you know it was like uh it was just like a weekend and that put me off a little bit it perturbed me and i was a little bit worried and i tried to talk her out of it and she you, didn't really want to deal and kind of brushed it off. And then I sent her the final draft that was,

that I had from when I was editing and she read the whole thing before everybody else got it. And, you know, she, she sends me a text and just like, I don't come off as much of a monster. So it's okay.

So, and I know, and for her for her like that's that's for her not exactly like this is an amazing book congratulations no no but sort of giving you permission right yeah well your mom figures prominently in the book i mean she's really you know a pillar of strength throughout and you know at times kind of a task master and taciturn but also somebody who fiercely defended you all the always all the time yeah it's the point of error you know like sometimes she falsely defended me but she was a good mother in that and she does loom large you know it's um you know task master and protector but that also implies a lot of control as well right and you know growing up as a process of shaking those controls and learning how to control oneself yeah which all kind of it started to break loose when you got to berkeley now the floodgate is open i i mean

there's so many things that you know our stories are very different but obviously because i come from a swimming background also like i just was so tapped into the narrative and there were so many things that i related to you know deeply just the emotions of the experience and and there's so many kind of dichotomies and tensions throughout the book like this this you know quest for identity that that rubs up against, you know, the sort of, you know, de facto limiting aspects of what it means to be a swimmer at that level. You know, this quest for freedom that butts up against the imprisonment of being this person who does this thing. and identity that mashes up against you know the the identity that's imposed upon you by the sport and you know that you participate in and the accomplishments that you've achieved and what the media decides to say about you oh yeah there's rampant dualities right that are at tension with each other i made a list of all the dualities. I was like, normal versus extraordinary, cowardice, courage, fear, and being unafraid, conformity and acting out, calculation that comes up against instinct, freedom and imprisonment, discipline and anarchy. That's a huge one, right?

Yes. Attention and privacy, all these sorts of things. It's just the whole book is kind of riddled with those things that make it so interesting yeah you you nail it right well let's like let's let's take it back because uh you know a lot of people don't don't know your story and it's one of the most incredible stories and so many ups and downs so you start out i mean you grew up like you were living in canoga park at one point not too far from where we are right now you start out, I mean, you grew up like you were living in Canoga Park at one point, not too far from where we are right now. You're an LA kid. Yeah, yeah. I grew up in Canoga Park, or at least that was the house I was born into and got my first taste of the water there. We had a pool in the backyard and, you know,

but it wasn't too long where, you know, in pursuit of that old style American dream, you know, my parents wanted to own their own house. So they moved further out into the undeveloped suburbs to have their own place and raise a family. So yeah, you know, I do consider myself a SoCal guy when I'm traveling and stuff. People ask where I'm from. I say LA and I was like, Oh, I'm from LA. I'm like, okay, I'm not from LA. I'm from the Valley than the Valley above the valley yeah valencia is really i mean that's where you went to high school right that's right which is you know quite a ways north of here uh and when does when does i mean you have this story in the book where you know it's sort of clear early on this affinity for the water when you kind of tiptoe to your pool when you're too young to swim and you're like i'm a swimmer you know and

then the gate goes up around the pool the next day. But when is it that swimming like clicks in as something that you're, you know, you have this affinity for? As far as achievement based and competition? Yeah, or just, you know, something that you enjoyed, perhaps. Well, that was the episode you know and that's too young for me to remember but it's the story is one of my mom's like favorite stories to tell me again and again and again and you know constantine did our best to to capture that in literary form um but you know that that was it like she always told me i loved being in the water i'd beg to be taken into the water and

there's something about in your very very early years like less than one years old where you have a greater affinity for being in the water and that kind of erodes and goes away the longer you're kept from it as you continue to grow and get more comfortable walking and then running on land right and and but that affinity never left you right like that was that was just never got a chance to on some level there's this destiny aspect to it you know i suppose that you could you could read into it um but i get the sense that for you initially you know the water the pool i mean the book is called chasing water right so the water holds this special symbolic meaning for you that equates to you know freedom it can it can yeah but it's it goes back to that that's where i love it that becomes your prison

right yeah so the competitive aspect kicks in when i think i was seven years old go to my first uh swim meet it was at the pool that i practiced at and was learning the strokes and in one of the events i just completely blew out everybody and jumped to you know they called it a double a time standard so i went from having like that C no time straight to double A. And that's kind of like a regional meet that you get to go to. And right then, you know,

the social ramifications of that kind of achievement kick in where the coaches are beaming, the older, like the big kid coaches are like, like coming by and saying, hi, I know my name. The family is excited and my teammates are kind of in awe you know so right away there's kind of like this uh reflection from those around you that what you did was good and you want more of that right and hence begins the crafting of an identity around this well and becoming sucker too you need it yeah a certain point it becomes what defines

you right right and so at what point do you start you know training do you do you end up doing like the double workout thing and all of that through high school i mean you you kind of burn out at one point until you get to high school and there's a coach and you know some teammates that you seem to click with that rejuvenates your passion yeah very much so throughout uh the journey you know with with my life and life in the water which are largely one in the same it it's always been about the relationships and yeah i had a i had a lull where i was not doing well not performing well and really struggling with that as i entered puberty and only kind of started to find my gift again towards the end of high school and uh what was the original question i don't know but by the when when you were a senior in high school were you getting recruited

all over the place like i i know what i got from the book was that you reached a certain level of proficiency like you were good right and you were going to be able to swim in college right but it wasn't like you were blasting out nag records all over the place and and you know on everybody's radar is like the next great sprinter right i didn't have a nag ever growing up which means national age group record for those people that are listening right right right and those are the people that would be on the radars, people who have nags in multiple events. Right. So it's interesting because, you know, now, you know, the unanimous opinion is, you know, you have just, you know, oodles of natural talents and, you know, one of the most naturally gifted sprinters that ever lived.

You know, there's like all kinds of, you know, accolades that are out there and all your colleagues that you know have said kind things about about your ability but it seems to me from reading the book that that wasn't necessarily self-evident you know at age 18 no absolutely not absolutely not and except with the with one exception one guy mike mike bottom yes who was able to see something in you that seems like other people, you know, didn't have the discernment for at that time. He did. He saw something in both my rebellion and what that outlook, what, and it's the resistance to conformity to what's established, you know, and how to go about things and how to get better

that I had found a way of my own to be as good as so many other people who do it the quote, like natural way, or like what is the establishment's way. So I think he saw that and he being the kind of coach that he is, believed that he could coach me to the next level. Right. And he totally did. I want to get into Mike Bottom in a minute. He's the coach at Cal. He was.

He's in Michigan now. Right. That's right. He's not there anymore. Extraordinary guy. I had the good fortune of swimming with his brother, Dave, at Stanford, who is also an amazing dude as well. But first question I have is, what is it about i mean you're the poster boy for like rebellious sprinter but i think in general the the conventional wisdom is

you know sprinters by their very nature are sort of iconoclastic in comparison to the other swimmers so what do you think it is about sprinters that make them this different kind of breed i think that's the way it was when we were coming up that that mantle of rebellion as like as the representative rebel of the team would be the sprinter i think that's changed though i think the old guard is starting to move on and now there's so much talk about like usrpt which is you know race pace training so people they don't do massive amounts of yardage or spending lots and lots of time training instead they keep it very brief very specific and very much geared around the pace that they would actually want to race at.

When I was swimming, you know, it was just yardage, yardage, yardage. Right. You jump in, with the exception of the warm-up, you're basically blasting every set. You know, there was no distinction between going hard and going easy. And there was no periodization in the training. I mean, the training techniques and the science behind swimming has come so far from my era. But I remember very well, you know,

being a freshman at Stanford and watching John Moffitt, like just decide that he wasn't going to swim that day or wouldn't come to morning workout or we'd go run stadiums. And he's like, yeah, I'm not doing that. And and i'm like who does he think he is like why is he doing but he what i of course like he's a good friend of mine now and i love the guy to death i couldn't understand it and i couldn't see it at the time but he knew himself well enough like he

knew what he needed and he knew that that was not going to advance him towards his goal and he almost had to you know put his foot down knowing that that was going to make him unpopular that that was going to make skip like completely insane but he didn't care and the science has now caught up where we recognize you know what that's all about and the you know i think mike bottom really kind of carried the torch of of bringing that philosophy and this sense of self-experimentation and trying new things and being adventuresome in training techniques into the era that is now sort of become the mainstream thing, right? So, when you show up at Cal and Mike's your coach and he sees that there's something special in you i mean your original idea was you were only

going to swim a year right this was just your ticket to get a scholarship i thought it was just my ticket into school right you know like you know that um as a high as a high school student so much planning revolves around this need that you have to get into college you know i was thinking about except being accepted into college you know for a bulk of the time. Yeah, but you had a 4.2 GPA, though. You were going to get into college. Yeah. Well, I didn't know how it works. I didn't feel like I was the smartest person in my school.

I was probably at the bottom end of all the honor students still. True. Okay, I didn't objectively know how it actually works as well as i do now um but to reel it back a little bit to i don't want to take credit for something that i think is is not due it's not like if i was deciding it's like you know what those stadiums aren't for me because i know what's going to make me great and it wasn't like that i couldn't i just couldn't i knew i couldn't do it i didn't have the heart for it i didn't have the mind for it and it was on mike as a coach who was like all right

let's find another way let's find another way to for you to be a part of it if that way isn't going to work let's find another way as opposed to just coming down on me hard like many a coach would. Yeah, it would not have worked out between you and Skip at Stanford. You would have quit after your freshman year and it would have been done. You know what I mean? And so just for clarity, like you were a guy who just had a hard time getting up from morning workout. It just wasn't happening. You were getting a reputation for being lazy and, you know, having difficulty with your teammates who were like come on man like why

aren't you doing this thing and mike was able to sit you down and try to craft a way to motivate you to get you interested and get you excited about the sport so what what was that do you think a lot of it was um being able to do things outside of the pool you know so if i was late for workout or i couldn't wake up and that's its whole its whole issue my my uh not my insomnia um well let's stick a pin in it for a second okay let me say this like i've had a couple guests on the podcast come in and talk about sleep and how important sleep is and how we shouldn't skimp on sleep. And you know, athletes, most of all, like that's where you make your gains when your body recovers. So the whole notion that swimmers or any athlete should wake up in an ungodly hour

and go train, and then be exhausted all day and then go back. It doesn't make sense. It's like the young doctors in residency who work 48-hour shifts, like their performance is not benefit. They're not benefiting performance-wise from that. So, it's just one of those things where it's like, well, that's what we do. That's how it's always been done. But that amount of stress uh i think it does harden you into a particular kind of machine and doctor friends of mine will we'll talk about it that way that they're just you know they're just they're just executing equations over and over again based off of symptom and divvy blah it's not the performance doesn't need to be that high

they just need to know it really really well and I think that stress test of trial by fire, of going through that kind of a thing, is what makes them capable of doing it. But do you think that you're, like, I'm just trying to imagine, like, all right, so you have a goal. Like, I want to be the fastest 50 freestyler in the world. Like, what is going to advance me towards that goal?

Is waking up at an ungodly hour every morning to go to the pool in the dark in the dark and cold no you know there's not when i was up all night there's a trial by fire aspect to that and there's a kind of a warrior thing and there's a camaraderie that happens because you're doing it with other people and you're all kind of suffering collectively but perhaps that's not the most scientific approach towards maximizing your potential. It's true. And I, and I think there are, there are different kinds of potentials, you know, what I think what works for me to make me like a better sprint swimming, which, you know, the, the actual value in that, we'll leave that. We won't even discuss that, but I think there is, I do miss out on something. That's what I'm do. I do. I do believe that, won't even discuss that but i think there is i do miss out on something that's

what i'm do i do i do believe that you know um otherwise why do navy seals do go through the training that they go through yeah no i get that and why do you do why do you uh have these very strong uh patterns of behavior to get you to do what you do yeah it's a good question i don't know that i don't know that i have the answer to that yeah i'm just different jokes for different folks right so all right well back to mike though so what is what is he you know what does he do to you know incite your your interest and get you excited about the sport right right so it could be anything from you know it was university so the idea of research you know we'd pop in tapes of all the greats through the years and what they did what made them great trying to like see it it's like

if you can make me see it and somebody else then maybe i can start detecting more things and how i work on them myself and so watching tapes of olympic champions and we were to be soon be future competitors um and start to emulate you know that that idea like fake it till you make it well i was doing that where i was like faking all these elements or imitating aspects of technique that all these great swimmers had and so it kind of all just melded together into what became me and what ultimately put me on the podium. So and Mike was into that, but he was it was more so that just there was a partnership there. And I would constantly test with him whether he cares about my swimming or he cares about me. What how did you test him? All the time.

Like not showing up, not showing up to work out, you know, just all kinds of poor choices when he is, you know, he was largely like my caretaker. If I, you know, in lieu of parents in the college environment, you know, he was the one who felt responsible for me. The whole battery of poor choices I made, you know, he had to be there and deal with me afterwards

and hopefully try to steer me into healthier development so I didn't need to hit a rock bottom, even if I fell down a few really deep wells. And how does that start to pay dividends? Like, how quickly are you starting to see results? Dual meet season, my freshman year you know i i was just working on technique and you know under under under his watch when i showed up and then i went away to training camp and in training camp it's not like i was always choosing before that to to miss workouts i just i

couldn't help it but in a training camp environment, you go along with the crew. You have less freedom. And due to that lack of freedom, I just fall in line with the discipline. It isn't hard. It's much harder to be disciplined and focused when you have a lot more going on. So got through training camp, went to my first dual meet and um you know broke 20 for the first time right which you know for swimming that's kind of a barrier that every sprinter looks at at some point right but it's interesting that you didn't break 20 until you

got to cal right no it's but in those days i think there had only been one or two in a dual mate like unshaven oh yeah yeah unshaven everything yeah i just i did it and that's when some of my other teammates who would kind of didn't get me and kind of had to brush me off as someone who's just gonna wash out to be like what's going on here right yeah there's something more happening some more i mean at that time did you aspire to be an Olympic swimmer? I mean, was that entering your mindset as anything that you thought you were capable of pulling off? No, definitely not. You know, it was a dream, you know, when I was a kid. And that dream had kind of faded out in high school where, you know, it was a pipe dream.

It didn't seem realistic in any kind of manner. It was a pipe dream. It didn't seem realistic in any kind of manner. And even as I started building up and developing and making these huge breakthroughs, that first college season, it wasn't until I went to national college championships and broke a world record and won the 100 freestyle as well that I was like, maybe I do have a chance yeah you broke a world record i think you might right well short course meters you know so yeah i know every in swimming you know the short course meters records are a little softer

they are a little soft still world records a world record right i feel like the the the thing that it seems you know from reading the book and like kind of reading in between the lines, the thing that really seems to motivate you beyond everything else is the camaraderie with your teammates. Like that really exceeds your own personal kind of vainglory over the whole thing. Yeah, I don't like to and don't want to do any of this alone. don't like to and don't want to do any of this alone you know like when it was in high school and before it was my teammates that kept me going when things were rough because they were my friends you know they were i wasn't just a tool some larger goal you know but we went through things together and you know we hung out together and in college it was the same thing. You know, I mean, after the Olympics, you know, I had maybe what I had one more good year in me in 2001. And then I was mentally motivationally checked out. I was,

I was looking at other things, but I still had another two years of eligibility, but I made it through that and performed pretty, pretty dang well considering that, considering my heart wasn't fully invested, but for the team. Right. Well, there was a moment where you could have gone pro after the Olympics and made a bunch of cash, but you would have had to give up your eligibility. And being a member of that team was more important to you at that time, which was an amazing choice that you made. I was motivated more by being with them

than trying to be outside of them as this professional swimmer all right and we're going to get there but i let's let's get let's we're working our way up towards your first olympics um i feel like everything came into focus when you went to that training uh training camp and start training with gary hall and these other great sprinters like everything kind of snapped into focus for you uh i mean what was it like meeting gary for the first time it's almost like you're meeting your match in terms of rebellious sprinter yeah yeah your doppelganger in certain ways yeah you know he was the exemplar and he was from whom we all trickled down from

uh i didn't i didn't even know who gary was really before i got to college i didn't even uh i don't even really remember watching the 96 olympics because i was so kind of tuned out of the competitive element in its own right yeah you know and um so you weren't like the kid who had pictures from swimming world magazine like all over your wall and all that kind of stuff no i remember pouring through it in 88 when uh when beyondy you know because beyondy is the one that sparked the olympic dream in me it is uh yes yeah and you know and i followed a lot of 92 in barcelona and then in 96 it was kind of like i was losing my i lost my edge and so i wasn't wrapped up in that world beyondy now teaches uh up at sierra canyon school are you still in touch with

him dude i see him every once in a while like i saw him at masters nationals the last time i've seen him give a couple talks and it's it's funny because you know like i am just like eyes just like bugged out just like wow you know the story's so good and i look around you know and it's a bunch of like teens who are the ones that are really supposed to be soaking it in. They're just like yawning. Like they just don't get it. They don't get it. It's a different time of what it meant to be a swimmer

or be left as a swimmer compared to other athletes. It's so true. It's changed so much. I went and spoke at Sierra Canyon last week and I've never met Matt in person. I mean, I've met him, like we swam in the same era, so I've met him in passing, but I don't

really know him uh and i i was up there to speak to the kids and um and he wasn't there that day he was gone i was so bummed but i was like you guys do you understand like who this is your teacher do you know what he did did you get the the gravity of his accomplishments or like whatever yeah right to think that he spent like a couple decades teaching math to middle school kids in hawaii i know right it's cool um all right so so you you hit this training camp in in uh in phoenix right tucson or phoenix no phoenix yeah tempe right and it's you and essentially like some of the top sprinters in the world. Yeah. Yeah. So we were the we caught we anointed ourselves the Dirty Dozen. And we had Olympians. We had a handful from South America.

One of them was a former world champion and the Polish all stars who would be future European champions. And then a handful of guys from Cal who are Americans. Right. And this was your prep leading up to olympic trials in 2000 that's right right and so what did you what did you learn from these guys you know i learned the most from john olsen you know he kind of took me under his wing he felt like i think he kind of recognized that you know he had done his best and he was you know it was his swan song and so he tried to wanted to pass off as much wisdom as he can or maybe you know that's just what you do when you get older but he taught me a lot about just negotiating the the highs

that was the harder part was negotiating the highs of performing well if not letting it get too spun out of control and staying focused on on my task and you know and just accepting me in, uh, in that kind of environment where, you know, a lot of those guys were still very much train hard all the time. No, don't be a bitch, but it's still a swim hard, you know, party hard crew for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody has a problem partying hard. Yeah. Especially Gary. Well, he wouldn't, he wouldn't party with us. You know, he was, he was a little older and he had, he had just made it through some, some of his own struggles.

Right. With type one diabetes. Type one diabetes. And then, you know, he, he failed a drug test for marijuana. Oh yeah. I remember that. Yeah. So he was, that's what made him the bad boy. Right. He had failed that test and, you know, so he was kind of like scorched earth in the swimming world because of that. And my times have changed, you know, like what they look at now. But yeah, you know, Gary, I didn't see him come in that often. So it was like, I was being able to look at myself the way others viewed me sometimes and be like,

man, I'm so tired. And then he just waltzes in after not showing up this morning and just drops a bomb, you know? Like grab a kickboard, do 100 meter long course and like 105, you know, like something really fast. Just be like, dang, you know? So to kind of see that and know that he's doing it his own way and to be kind of like then coached through it by mike to be like

you know gary does his thing that's how he does it is what makes him great you know and you know because it would be easy to be prone to like jealousy to know that uh this person could be that great without doing as much as you believe needs to be done. And Mike understanding that every swimmer has their own specific needs and trying to enter into that partnership with all of them and meet them where they're at and try to provide them with what they need to be their best as opposed to what most coaches do, which is like, this is the program. You're either, you know, you're either with me or you're against me and right there's no negotiation yeah and i'm i'm uh i'm learning the most about this now you know as i enter into a

world where i do some coaching um and at the top level man ego the coach's ego becomes like the most massive obstacle to navigate. Interesting. All right. So, so going into trials, like, did you believe that you, you know, were in contention for, for a spot? Like what's the, what's the thinking? I did. I believed if I did everything right, I had a legitimate chance to get on that relay. And so you go, you get, you get second at trials, right?

Well, I got, I got fifth in the hundred so that put me on the relay which is kind of like a you know that's kind of uh the monkeys off my back you're on the team yeah i know i'm going to the olympics and then i fired off a great 50 and got second and so i knew i was going to compete an individual event as well and what is that feeling when you know you're going to the Olympics? That's crazy, you know? Like, to go from really at only like two, three years prior to that, it not even being in your head that that would be a possibility.

No, it's, actually, I'll chime in here and be that there was probably, there was a seed of, a toxic seed of entitlement that was planted at that moment because i knew i was going in that way in what way well you know i i believed if since i was going to be on this relay that i was going to win a gold medal no matter what you know uh the u.s had won that relay ever since it had been a part of the olympic games so there was a legacy there was a tradition and you know i was going to be a part of the olympic games so there was a legacy there was a tradition and you know i was going to be a part of it right and so you show up in sydney we'll talk about the relay first uh the australians are the number two relay in the world uh gary makes an impolitic

remark to the media the americans were going to crush the australians they're going to smash them like guitars right right and that i remember i remember that because that set off like a media maelstrom in the wake of that it did and they totally stripped that bit out of context what was the full sentiment well he, he said that like, they're enormously talented. They're going to be a super fast team is going to be competitive, but at the end, we're going to smash them like a tires. So,

so he totally paid homage to them leading up to no, but we're going to win. Right. It wasn't like he just came out and said like, we smashed them. It's kind of like when one of Michael Phelps is competitors, you know, talks a little smack. All that does is phelps's competitors you know talks a

little smack all that does is is put fuel you know fuel on the fire oh michael yeah the worst possible thing that you could do right so this incites the australians and and so this is quite the showdown so so walk us through like how that relay went down well in prelims you know without gary and neil our two best guys we were you know a fraction of a second off the world record and you know i knew at that point it's like well not only are we gonna win a gold medal we're gonna break a world record too this is gonna be incredible and at night we go out and march out in front of you know however many thousands of australians mostly and in sydney in the home house in the home house and swimming over there is you know like basketball or football

over here it's it's really their their sport and um and this is the era of ian thorpe and you know swimming had never been bigger no yeah he was how old was he 16 at the time or 17 i don't remember just yeah it was crazy i remember driving we were driving through downtown and there was a skyscraper and probably the first like 15 to 20 floors of it like every glass window of that floor uh it made up a giant just like from the chest up of ian thorpe just his head for like 20, 25 floors of, of a skyscraper. And it was like, wow.

Yeah. This is swimming in Australia. Yeah. Yeah. And this was all put on his shoulders before it even, before it even won an Olympic gold. So we march out and, you know,

they announced the U S and there's a few cheers and they announce Australia and the place just roared. And being that I was so inexperienced, I'd never been to an international meet before. I didn't even have a passport before I made the Olympic team that as soon as it got quiet, I stood up on the blocks. Stood up on the blocks, getting ready to start and I hear a referee go, lane floor, four, please step down.

And at that point, I actually look around. Instead of just the lane in front of me, I know it's like there's nobody else ready. Everybody else is just standing at the side. And it turns out this is where you have to wait for this long whistle before you stand up. So I'm like a goon up there. And I step down. And then they call us back up. We take our mark.

And they set us off. And I dive in. You know, and I'm pumping my underwaters just like as fast as I can. And I, you know, I couldn't help it. I squeeze a look next to me. You know? Sometimes you just have to look. And I see Michael Klim klim one kick after another just surging ahead of me to the point where

we actually break to the surface of the water he's got a full body length i'm crushed and i lose sight of my game plan and i spin my wheels to catch him. And I catch him at the turn, the halfway point. But I'd used too much. So on the way back, I started fading. And gradually, I'm falling further and further back until I met his feet and even a little bit before. I touched the wall for the exchange. And, you know, Australia has a formidable lead. Michael Klim had broken the world record leading off the relay.

And, you know, I'm just like completely wrung out and i climb out just the lactic acid pouring through you know every single muscle and i watch just like a broken record as every american sprints to catch the australian and pass them only to fade right at the end as for the next exchange neil walker did the same thing then jason lizak and then it was gary hall jr and ian thorpe and gary has the lead on him he takes the lead early and coming back ian's catching him inch by inch or as it were centimeter by centimeter since we're in australia right and so with five meters to go with two more strokes he overtakes them and touches the australians win 12 15 000 people roar and triumph uh you know the australian swimmers stand up on their blocks and start playing air guitars yeah that image of them playing air guitar

you can still find that one, right? Yeah. Yeah. And we were just, I was just devastated because I thought that was what was going to get me to the podium. And so in the wake of that, how do you get it together to get ready for the 50? Well, I isolated myself a ton. You know, even going by media at that point, I didn't trust myself to say anything. So I kind of just stood back of my teammates quietly, just breathing in and breathing out. And, you know, knowing that having not done it there and being a little too immature to understand, you know, that I was still part of a great thing. That I had one more opportunity. So the blinders went on and I really felt that I had let what somebody else had done get to me.

I let somebody else performance in a sport where you don't need to it's not like boxing or tennis where you need to figure out a way past your opponent you know mano a mano this is just a race you know what you do is all you and any if somebody else gets in that that's your failure not their success right so i was i just started going through it in my head, hour by hour, day by day for a handful of days, just of what could go wrong, what could go right, and every possible permutation of what could happen. And so by the time I actually got to my individual event,

and I stood up on those blocks, don't even like remember the race right you know it just i stood up i took my mark the race happened which was just an execution of everything that i was ready for and i opened myself up to just swimming free do you do you do you have some kind of specific like visioning preparation that you do? Like what's the ritual? Like ready room ritual? Yeah. It's really just it's attunement and control the body.

With a shave and a taper, your nervous system is just like on fire. It wants to go. And it's about being like just for me it was always about trying to just be aware of it but not don't let it out don't let it out yet so you feel every heartbeat you know you feel you know if you're sitting your forearms against your legs if your heels are touching you feel that you know if the air conditioner is blowing on your head you feel that too and you feel it all at once um and just being in that state just moment to moment to moment to moment and it's very you know and then it's there's

idiosyncratic of how you proceed from that room to behind the blocks to on the blocks to taking your marks and when you're behind the blocks right before the 50 are you looking around at the other guys or you're just staring down the end of the lane staring down the lane and is gary like wearing his his like you know muhammad doing his muhammad ali routine in the boxing shorts and all of that i uh i know he did it uh-huh but you didn't see it but i didn't see it right didn't see it there was no space for anybody else at that point everything shut out everything shut out uh shut out and then you just i mean it's almost like a fugue state like the you know you're just you're you're so programmed to go that you're just expressing what's already happened inside of you right right and you touch how long before you know what had happened um as long as it took me to squint my nearsighted eyes

and make out the one next to my name and I saw simultaneously another one next to Gary's. And it's funny, because you guys had joked about tying at the Olympics. It was one of those situations I had actually imagined. I was like, well, what if we tied? Right. And other teammates that were there for other countries,

I'd done the same for them. It's so crazy. So what is it, what's the, you know, what do you, what do you feel like when you've won an Olympic gold medal? Like, what is that like? Well, you know, you, you have a fist pump. You're stoked and you're, you're super happy. And, you know, Gary was there and Bart was there. And, you know, it was just being able to hug over the landlines, you know, it was just, it was there. And it was just being able to hug over the landlines.

It was great. That was the best part of that. And what happens next, I feel like, really ushers in the next phase of your life. What happens immediately next cracks the door open to what ultimately you know becomes a very confusing time for you so i'm beaming and i'm walking down the pool to media and the media guy is jim jim gray puts the mic in my face and he says so i noticed you twitching behind the blocks was that your Tourette's? And I am just stunned because I thought that was something I kept buried real close that nobody publicly, there was no public knowledge of my Tourette's. And I froze, steering the headlights.

I couldn't say anything as it started going through my head at a million miles an hour. What are people going to think based off of what I say? I have not prepared to answer this question whatsoever. You know, and there's that cold, that cold stare of the camera just right on you. Millions of people are watching. Yeah. It's live, right? It's live.

So you don't say anything. I don't say anything. I don't say anything until, you know, there's a painful, you a painful you know almost 10 15 i don't know how long it was it was excruciating though and then it's such an uncool thing to ask you i mean like of all the things that he could have asked you i mean yeah and it was i don't even know how he got that knowledge. You know? Like a lot of my teammates didn't even really know about that. And, well, let's talk about it a little bit. You know, it's something that you've dealt with for most of your life. It kind of started to manifest around junior high, right?

Right. With your eye twitching. I mean, tell me what happened. with your eye twitching? I mean, tell me what happened. Well, in essence, I would be losing control of my body for bits and periods of time. So my primary symptom was like,

my eyes would just like flutter. And while they could continue to blink for these, there are short fits, you know, they would last for, you three five seconds not very long but i couldn't do anything while that was happening it would interrupt anything that was going on so if i was reading i lose my place reading um you know if i was supposed to be working on a math problem and i was going through the calculus in my head i would forget and have to start over from the beginning and it was happening just like frequently like every 30 seconds you know three seconds was lost

to me and i'd have to start over again and um only through taking like a bunch of these uh there are these hypertension pills i'd i'd always call them tranquilizers because i'd take them and they just knock me out just completely put me out uh sleep at night during the day in class whatever it may be just to try to keep those tapped down so that i can go through days semi-normal and get some things done and it was causing like social problems for you at school right like people for sure kids knew what was going on and then you can't really hide it if you're just like blinking uncontrollably you know and uh at at school you know a lot of a lot of my friends or a lotably, you know, and at school, you know, a lot of my friends or a lot of like, you know, what would be the social group?

They didn't know what it was. And it wasn't that they weren't outright malicious or anything like that, but they retreated from me. And then I started to become comfortable just like being on my own because I wouldn't have to deal with the stairs. And when you're at swim practice and you're underwater, you're underwater and bug you. It wouldn't bug me. And then there was something about putting in that effort that it would hold the Tourette's

at bay. Interesting. I think using the energy, putting my nervous system to work provided an outlet so it didn't need to lash out in its own way. Well, most people are familiar with Tourette's because of, you know, the idea that you, you know, spontaneously burst into profanity, right? But it's much more. You do that? I do.

I do it and uh sometimes it's just yells you know when i when i get excited and yeah and it comes sharp it doesn't there's no like build up to it it's just like and you're just really are you completely unconsciously aware of it happening no no i i know it's there and i try to direct it you know you can't can you fully control it but you can be in the driver's seat that's what i've learned you can feel it coming on do you know like when yeah well it's now that i'm that i'm older and i mean i still exhibit symptoms to me and only if you like have it or you have experience with it would you be able to identify them as you as i'm sitting across from you and it's a neurological disorder right but yeah from what

i can tell they're still not really sure what causes it. I mean, you have these meds that can kind of clamp down on it, but there's no cure for it. No. Right? No. And fortunately, my neurologist said that I would grow out of it eventually. And it's not that I grew out of it, but I grew into it. I learned how to be it without it like

completely ruining me so and an environment has so much to do with it you know so if i put myself in the very excited environment then it comes out more and through the years i have learned to you know in fact like use it to my advantage well there's an interesting thing that that i read about in your book that I was not aware of. You talk about how Oliver Sacks did these experiments and started to figure out that there's this bizarre relationship between Tourette's and speed and performance, which is really kind of fascinating, right? So, you have this history of taking these meds to prevent you from having these outbursts. But then as you get into college, you start experimenting with going off your meds right before a big meet. So it's almost like a reverse performance enhancer going on, you know?

Yeah. I mean, could you feel it? Like, what is that? Is that like a palpable thing that you could tell the difference when you're off the meds? When I was off the meds? Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah.

tell the difference when you're when i was off the meds oh yeah uh-huh yeah and do you do you do you is there is there truth in that you think that like your your your speed your you know your ability to be a sprinter is related somehow to having Tourette's i think that, I mean, yes, but it's more that through so much of trying to fight off this outburst of energy, of trying to keep it in check. It's like, you know, you're trying to stare down yourself, but, you know, eventually you buckle. to handling the excess of energy that everybody deals with when they're tapered. And I see people do it all the time. They're tapered, they're excited, and they start just doing things with their body that they shouldn't be. They should be trying to hold it in,

save it for the actual performance. Right, and for people that are listening that aren't familiar with what taper is, basically you just destroy your body for six or nine months or however long, and then you go through what's called a taper listening that that aren't familiar with what taper is basically you just destroy your body for six or nine months or however long and then you go through what's called a taper where you refine your training you back off the volume and the intensity your body is repairing itself and suddenly you find yourself in this state where you have literally like boundless energy and i

remember being at meets and just you know that's just a recipe for disaster with swimmers they want you know they want to get into trouble they can't sit still they're and just, you know, that's the recipe for disaster with swimmers. They want to get into trouble. They can't sit still. They're like, you know, destroying hotel rooms and all that stuff, right? Because you have all this pent-up energy that is meant to be directed to your performances in a meet. But sometimes you can't contain it. Yeah. And so I think that's where the Tourette's became an asset.

contain it yeah and so i think that's where the the terrestre became an asset it was that it was training me to control that before i needed to use that in some kind of way in the future you know it's and i talked about it was with a friend before this is this idea of super compensation and the human body is incredible like that where you can like beat it down and then as soon as you stop beating it down it'll continue to repair itself at the rate that it was in order to survive. Right. Going into it and to keep it going. Keep going to that heightened sense. You know, it's the same kind of thing that leads a tapered athlete to outperform what his body should have been able to.

But it's also the same reason why if a serious alcoholic quits cold turkey, he gets a seizure. Yeah, I've never thought of it that way. That's so true, though though it's super interesting yeah um all right so you get you get blindsided with this terence question yeah and you go blank and then it's followed up with a second question yeah right and what's the second question uh loosely is uh so so what's it like to be black and win a gold medal another question you were unprepared for yeah i was i mean i'd heard a couple of times um you know they phrase it as african-american descent you know and you know and i am i am but it's not like it's swimming being so very visual it's just a body and also also very white. And very, very white. It's very, very white.

That is, I'm standing there with, you know, this golden tan that when I stay out of the sun, I'm as pale as anybody, as any Scandinavian. And then to try to convince an audience out there that I'm black, you should listen to to me which was never anything that you had any interest in doing and now it's being foisted upon you exactly right this mantle is being this is an interesting narrative this is a narrative that's gonna that's gonna get people to click on a link or or or continue to watch or to read right so being so young and being in that kind of a situation you know if you don't have your own story in control of your own story, a story will be created for you. And it just so happens these old white men were the ones that were writing the story about me because I didn't have one yet.

And that goes back to this duality in the book. This, you know, the differentiation between being in control of of your own identity and having that identity foisted upon you so suddenly you're you know you're the first you know person of african-american descent ever win a gold medal in swimming well american american right united states right right oh because there was anthony nesty yeah anthony nesty right from suriname um and you don't look black but your father's black right he's jewish and you must on some level have been expecting this i mean was that yeah i'd been asked once or twice about it yeah but um i also was not expecting to win an individual gold medal right and all of a sudden be like,

winning the gold medal, that is a dream. Nowhere in there did I even consider that I then had to represent something because of it. For me, growing up with that dream, it was just about racing as fast as I can, faster than anybody. There was no effect. I didn't even think about what the effect would be,

especially in a social manner. And so what was the effect? I mean, this interview really, you know, sends you into a bit of a prolonged tailspin, really. I mean, it has profound impact on, you know, the next 10 years of your life, from what I can gather. Does it? I think it does. Would you would you disagree with that i mean it's not this guy's fault some you know those questions we're going to get right of course you know i don't i don't blame him you know but it's certainly through the for the through the years i have since like you know formulated ideas on media as an entity you know and how it operates and how it must and you know the people that are part of it you know they're

they're still people you know like they're they're just doing what they do but you know media is like capital you know it's a it's a devouring beast so if you don't find a way to to feed the beast it'll just eat you that's that's that's super true so here i am parceling out a little bit of a little bit of feed and i guess i'm'm the media. I don't really consider myself media, but for better or worse, I suppose. Well, I mean, I chose you, right? Right. Yeah, you did. So you're in control of your identity now.

Yeah. Well, at least I'd like to think so. So you continue to swim for a couple of years after this. And in fact, you put in some pretty amazing performances. You perform in a stellar fashion at the World Championships like two years later, right? You're swimming faster than ever. But your interest

and your enthusiasm and your excitement about your identity as a swimmer starts to wane. Like you're performing almost despite yourself and your behavior. Right.

I'm performing and I'm racing because I enjoy it. And, you know, it became, having met my ultimate goal, then my next challenge was not as noble or it was like, well, how much can I fuck this up and continue to succeed?

You know, so I kind of went down that path a little bit because there was this tension, this cognitive dissonance between who I thought i was or who i wanted to be internally who i was meant to be versus this constructed public image of who anthony irvin the swimmer was and they were at odds with each other and and now knowing now you know like that was all on me i could have done without whatever i wanted instead i kind of did flight ran away from it yeah and that fine line between kind of the the the quest for you know discovering what that identity is for yourself and the self-destruction aspect of that it's almost like on some level you had to burn the house down to begin to figure out you know who that person is for you

right right i always liked uh that latin phrase tabula rasa the blank slate you know because nobody nobody ever really has a blank slate and you know i tried i tried my best to create one for myself but everybody's thrown into this universe with some kind of past history their family and as a child you know you do things that aren't necessarily your choices and you you know there's a certain momentum to everything and a lot of times uh your choices are just about steering in a particular direction or not but you can't really change directions right and you know swimming is kind of a bro culture you know in a lot of ways right and I had, you know, Aaron Pearsall on the podcast, and we talked about this a little bit because, you know, he's, you know, he's very much a soul

surfer guy who, you know, he's not of that ethos at all. And you're not either. Like, you're a very, you know, you're a very introspective, you know, sort of bookish, You're a very introspective, bookish, creative, artistic person who's immersed in this culture of – it's kind of a fraternity lifestyle in some respect. And on top of that, the idea that somehow you could transcend this mantle of Olympic gold medalist so that people could see the true Anthony Irvin behind that mask is almost an impossible ask of somebody, right? So, in order to do that, you had to blow everything up. Blew it all up. Yeah, yeah. So, drugs, motorcycles, drinking, rock and roll, women. Women, yeah. I tried to do it all. I tried to do it all. you're like cross-dressing at one point, you know, and you're smoking cigarettes and you're popping Oxycontins and you're getting into hallucinogens.

And I mean, it goes off the rails, right? So how much of this is, you know, part of that can be chalked up to, like in order to figure out who I am, I have to try on all these hats and answer these questions for myself. And how much of that was just pure self-destructive, like, fuck you?

Well, there was no pure destructive, fuck you. Oh, there were a few pure moments of self-destructive, self-destruction. Or just, you know, lack of, you know, lack of respect or care for yourself. I mean, you're driving around your motorcycle motorcycle like a madman on some level it could be contended that you know there's a death wish aspect to this yeah you know you're flirting but i also believed i knew what i was

doing right you know there was so there's the maniacal courage to it there's a there's an ego component too absolutely absolutely and that and it took considerable work to finally get that ego to collapse but once it did you know then that's when things i really started feeling i started to become more me yeah and and what where does the zen buddhism come into it zen buddhism how does that contribute to the path that That actually came in relatively early, right after winning the gold medal, because I always had a bunch of people asking, it's like,

well, what's it like? How do you get to that place? And as I, you know, like circling around, trying to describe what that feeling would be like, it eventually came to me that it would be like Buddhism.

Oh, wait, no, I'm jumping the rails here. That was why it fit, but Zen Buddhism actually came into the picture when I ate a bunch of mushrooms and I completely was like just bonked out seeing cartoons and it was like too much for me.

Like I didn't freak out or do anything. I was able to kind of channel that inner place and just let everything wash over me for the necessary time until I was back to being just sober, for lack of a better word, though forever changed. And I woke up the next day

after finally able to sleep and I looked at my ceiling i was like man there's got to be a better way of of uh of understanding the universe than than doing too many drugs yeah then trip it out too hard did you ever like do dmt or ayahuasca or any of those no i always meant to and i read a ton about it but you know my my psychonauts uh days kind of they they dwindled down and disappeared before that kind of stuff had come my way yeah all right so mushrooms and then so i woke up that day walked outside my front door and saw there was a zen temple catty corner to my house and i'm like wow it's a sign so i started going there

like every day and just meditating and and you have some beautiful passages in the book about some of the sort of zen koans that you start to um you know play around with do you remember any of those uh yeah well those uh a few of those were genuinely mine but you know constantine actually he studied the philosophy as an undergraduate at columb, and he specialized in Buddhism. So, he was able to bring forth a lot of those. There's nobody else that could have co-written this book with you, by the way. He's like the perfect co-writer for you. Yeah. Well, dude, we were hanging out for a few years before I even got back into swimming again.

You know, and you can't, you don't be friends with somebody unless you have some kind of work, working like foil as a, in conversation. Right. Yeah. And understanding. All right. So, you start going to the Zen, the Zen Buddhist temple and start meditating, right? Right. And so, what is the impact of that?

Maintaining a semblance of control of myself. And this was, this was before you retired in 2003, right? Yeah, this was in like late 2000, early 2001. So I was attempting to stabilize after all the hoo-ha of the post-Olympics. And I had a girlfriend and I was like was like okay i need to stop partying so excessively and you know this gave a good good uh force of stabilization for me and it was all it was all mine you know and so i was training doing well meditating and you know the world championships that summer was in uh was in japan i was in

fukuoka you know a place i'd always wanted to go and that were that there was arguably at least for me that was like my most successful meet right yeah you said that you thought that was your your best performances yeah yeah i mean i won the 50 and 100 you know an event that nobody really thought i could do based on the training that you were putting in leading up to that um i think it was just my preparedness and my confidence and yeah just i think i had all the right habits that that year to have gotten that kind of result but you know i feel like at the same time there's still this encroaching dismantling that's kind of creeping up on you um and you know one of the things that i talk about

on the podcast a lot is you know we've gone through our i've gone through my own dismantling and i know a lot of people that have and and and you always want to sort of if you're if you're peering in on someone else's life who's going through something like that you always want to sort of, if you're peering in on someone else's life who's going through something like that, you always want to reach in and save them or help them. But, you know, one of the things that we always say is, you know, don't deprive them of, you know, the beauty of that moment. Because there's a rebirth that can happen that comes with that level of self understanding that is in development right and i feel like that's something that you are experiencing at that time you know or approaching at that time and in no small part due to this struggle with ego that was precipitated by becoming an overnight superstar right because i don't think swimming is very

unique because there are there are very few other sports that go from basic like anonymity on a mainstream level to the white hot spotlight of the olympics and then back to anonymity right so you live your life training and doing what you do and you're, you're winning races along the way, but it's not until the Olympics and all the world is watching where it's almost like a switch gets flicked and everything's different. Yeah. Switch gets flicked. Everything's different for you. And as well, it's like you give birth to a bunch of little swimmers around the world. Yeah. Well, the responsibility that comes with that, the mantle that you have to carry with that i mean what is it what do you think people don't understand about what that experience is like

i don't know it's largely that achieving some ultimate goal you spend you know your your whole known life pursuing is accomplishing it is nothing like uh what you dream it would be the actuality the reality is just so much so much more it completely eclipses what you thought it was going to be because it's so destination focused it is right for so many years everything is ramping up to this one day. And, you know, as you know, I'm sure, you know, it's about, and I know what you, that you appreciate now, it's that it's the journey, you know, it's the, it's the camaraderie with the teammates. It's the experience that goes into getting to that day that carries the value, not the destination itself. But when you're kind of compelled to put all this emphasis and focus on that one day to then realize that didn't

fill whatever hole you were trying to fill that drove you to that day is, I would imagine, you know, very destabilizing and confusing. And I think it's something that a lot of athletes deal with, especially athletes in, you know, in retirement, in early retirement. Well, on one hand, on one hand, I think that you almost want to tell yourself to not think too far past that goal because that goal is so meaningful that looking beyond it can somehow jinx you of getting to it. And that was something I certainly experienced, like with that relay, you know, that sense of entitlement, that, you know, you don't want to, you want to go into that kind of pursuit where nothing else matters, nothing else should get in the way. where nothing else matters, nothing else should get in the way.

So you even sacrifice what you anticipate to be in order so that you can get there in reality. And to be competitive at that level, you almost can't allow any external thought about what comes after to enter your consciousness. No, that becomes a distraction. Yeah, it becomes a distraction. So in some level, it can be argued that it that it that it cripples you from becoming an actualized human being by its very nature ultimate achievement yeah yeah or just being

you know to be that driven on one specific thing right you know whether you're an athlete or anything else i suppose yeah i don't think it's necessarily healthy um and it's i thought it made me sick but you know i've i've grown acquainted with these ups and downs that's just part of my life right and we're going to get into what drives you now let's let's let's dig let's dig the hole all the way to the bottom first right right right so uh all right so in 2003 it's like you're done right oh yeah totally i mean was there without motivation was it a did you creep up to that point or did you just wake up one day and just you know i'm done with this it's over with no it was creeping it was creeping for a while it was uh yeah i just i didn't know why I was doing it anymore. I had no more goals left

and the distractions seem so much better than the training. Well, it's such a monk-like existence, maybe not for you in comparison to most swimmers, because you seem to be able to live like a pretty social life in comparison to maybe the guy who's training for the 1500. Right. But, uh, but still, you know, you have to live, you know, a very, uh, monastic life. And so the temptation of just being normal again. Yeah. And you know, when I was younger, it was enough to be driven by the ambition to tolerate the process but if without that without that the ambition then then like what's the process for you know i was too immature to understand you know what it would ultimately become about as i grew older so what was the plan what was the plan i was like oh

i'm gonna i'm gonna be a rock star yeah right i mean had you been playing music all along i started playing like in 2003 i started teaching myself guitar and stuff and but really that was just this this spontaneous well of of emotion to try to express something that i was unable to and i felt that with music with uh the artists that i liked that they were able to do that who are your guys oh man well certainly i was learning i learned guitar through jack white and the white stripes um you know growing up smashing pumpkins was like my favorite band so his existential angst right was i was get you, man. You get me. And so without knowing any of the details or knowing any of the ideas that actually went into that,

I felt that that was the medium because it takes you into the moment. I feel like music is so temporal like that. It brings you into the moment. You feel something in the moment and then it can pass on. moment and then it can pass on and and uh when does it become like a thing like you're going to be in a band and you're going to pursue the rock and roll dream oh of right away yeah you know i'd so you're still in berkeley at this point this is before you go to new york yes uh-huh still in berkeley for a few more years just uh working odd jobs for very short periods of time before i get fired and and i'm just like you know i'm in a band with friends you know some of them

weapons of mass destruction yeah the the weapons of mass destruction that's so awesome it was it was such a joke you know like a thrasher band name you know yeah well you know we were just like we definitely channeled a lot of like rage against the machine and um but it was super fun you know i look back on those times so fondly because we didn't care about like anything we just wanted to rock and have a good time and um you know i was doing that for a while and you know when it built up it built up and we were getting better and better we even started playing gigs and then it up, it built up, and we were getting better and better. We even started playing gigs, and then it fell apart. And I felt like I was back at square one. We were a band without a singer, and where was this going?

I'd run out of money. I was selling off my possessions at this point to sustain my lifestyle. And then I was just like, you know what? Time to go wandering. Right, and what's mom saying? My mom largely wouldn't even talk to me at this point did it break her heart when you when you uh when you retired in 2003 it did it did and

she totally was you know but she just kept telling me she's like just stick with it you can save enough money to buy a house and i'm like what the hell do i want a house for mom you think i want to be a grown-up rock and roll rock and roll and so so what inspired you to move to new york well i had um just through word of mouth you know i i had i had i had gone to the florida keys to do some like coaching with gary halls like the whole race club set up yeah it's set up down there and one of the people that i worked with you know went back to new york from this camp and told her coach there her master's coach and so about having worked with me and so he called me up and was like oh you know there's um i do this like triathlete camp in curacao you know it's

in the caribbean uh in like january for like a week you know would you come be my assistant coach and i was like i've got nothing going on right so i go and the guy you know just that new york mentality was it it was inspiring right away just to see how how sharp he moved and talked and uh and it was very familiar because my mom has a ton of that because she's from new york and i never really knew what that was i didn't know anybody else from new york at the time hadn't met anybody through the course of my life actually and so you know in an effort to try to both unlock that maternal side of my history because my mom doesn't talk about her past really at all and needing a job and my friend being out there having started a swim school that i could i had a job if i went and i can just do further exploring so i was

just packed a bag grabbed a guitar and went right and. And so it starts in Curacao, but then you find yourself kind of couch surfing through Manhattan and Brooklyn for how long were you there? I was there for a year initially. And then after that first year, I made it through all four seasons. And then I kind of had discovered what my glass ceiling was and that I wanted to go back to school and actually get my degree new york can kind of bring you to your knees that way i didn't feel like it brought me to my knees it's like i saw what i was capable of doing knowing myself as well as i did and i said that's not enough so and what in what way like what's not enough what i I thought I would be if I, if I stayed. If you stayed there. Yeah.

Cause I don't, I don't know if New York, given where I was, if New York was a place I knew I wanted to continue to grow. It was a great place to like be a 20 something year old hipster, you know, uh, with, you know, who treated his time cheaply and just wanted to have fun and socialize, you know, truly trying to fill in that blank slate. But knowing that being goal oriented does have tons of value. And for that, I, I wanted to go back to school. Right. I figured out what I'd actually study, how to make good use of that time.

But I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like what triggered that in many ways was you starting to work with kids and in the pool and starting to experience, you know, kids learning how to swim and just the joy that they have at that level, like helped instill in you, like sort of a childlike sense of appreciation for the sport and for your life. And that grant, that seemed to ground you in a, you know, in a city that can be very ungrounding. It did. And that was, that was, those were some growing pains of my own in New York. Cause I initially felt like I had no idea what I was doing when I was teaching these kids. So I was so afraid and uncomfortable. Um, and I, there was really a lot of doubt if I was effective at this or if I was going to be, but through time, you know, I got used to it. And then there was, became those reminders of a time gone your way back when I was

a kid and I actually would play in the water and enjoy it because that's how it started. And somewhere through the competitive ringer and the relentless pursuit of achievement, I had lost that sense of play or, you know, it had been just buried so deep that I'd forgotten that was where it had all started. So, I mean, and that's absolutely true. And at that point I was, I had carried a huge chip on my shoulder about swimming for many years. I didn't go anywhere near the water. That was the first time getting back in the water in any capacity for since i retired you know was to get in to teach these kids right and you're hanging out in new york city with all these

characters and partying and all that none of these people like really even know that you that you had this no i was a swimmer i'd hold that super close yeah yeah and and what's going on with your kind of grappling with identity and ego and all of that at this time? Like, are you settling into some sense of self? Yeah. In a, you know, progressed way. Yeah. I really enjoyed the chameleon status that I was developing of, you know, like being able to fit in somewhere and, you know, just being Anthony, a regular guy or tony as it were uh instead of you know because somebody opens their mouth whether it's me or somebody else and i'm in a group and

they're like well he's an olympic gold medalist instantly everybody's assessment of me changes and i was done with that i wanted to leave that behind so i just i never brought it up you know um and it was super liber i never brought it up you know um and it was super liberating you know it also you know like it showed me like i had a i was i was behind everybody on any other pursuit that i would want to go after i was like very far behind because obviously everybody's still they own themselves and they've been working on themselves for a long long time they didn't deliberately bury it well they've also been pursuing whatever it is they're interested in you know for many years and probably had a more advanced sense of like you in certain ways like swimming almost truncates your personal

development because you can't really focus on anything else and you don't you don't entertain what you're going to be doing post career as much. It reminds me of a song lyric. I miss me. I miss everything. I'll never be, you know? So after having committed so much to swimming, I was like, now I want to make space to, to do some of those other things that I'd kind of had to turn away from along the way. Even if it meant that I was going to be just like skill-wise just garbage and everybody's going to be better than me because i'd be so far behind in the starting line

and then you decide to go back to grad school right i'll study english yeah so it wasn't until i'd finished i'd finished my undergrad actually my i got my bachelor's in english you know i did that in like two and a half years a little bit more because i was i kept going back to new york to live there for a while and then doing school um but yeah once i actually started graduate school and that had to do had everything to do with like sports and swimming and then i really had to start confronting my identity as an athlete and trying to deconstruct it, unpackage it, analyze it in the context of graduate school. And that's when I largely got back into the water. So what did you, in that unpacking process, like what did you discover?

Well, so much anger about things. Actually, put it into words on a, on a page, you know, is there's a certain catharsis to that, you know, and start writing about your experiences as a way of, yeah, at a very, in a neck, in an academic way, you know, like where I would, I'd write about things I did in felts and then argumentation for way, why I may have felt that personally, but then as well as the environment contributing to that. So using theoretical lenses to try to explain it. And that was a big game changer to me.

Because before that, I was doing music, I was expressing a lot of the same things, but it wasn't in such literal terms of my experiences as an athlete. Right. You can express anger or energy through music, but not necessarily be in touch with exactly where that's coming from or why. Right, you're just reaching out.

It's like, everybody feels this way. That's why, you know, like I like it. I can identify with it. Yeah, that's interesting. And so that kind of leads you back into the pool. Yeah, so yeah, after that first semester of grad school, you know, I smoked my last cigarette turned in that last paper and uh and then i got back into the pool uh-huh and that was it with the

cigarettes i was it with the cigarettes how much were you smoking uh i was like 15 to a pack a day right wow that's tough to quit that yeah and i'd been built ramping that up for several years that's amazing but now it's like that was now that was it's over over six years now uh-huh or over five years right but it wasn't like okay i'm making a comeback definitely not i was even if subconsciously i was thinking that i was way too scared to admit it even to myself so it starts off with you, jumping into some master's workouts and then training a little bit with the women's team. That's right. With Terry. Yeah, jumping into some master's workouts. Shout out to Fuego and Berkeley. So there you have it. I'm so sorry,

you guys. I just cannot believe this cut out right in the middle of a sentence, basically. I think we continued to talk for like 45 minutes, maybe even an hour. And the conversation just got better and better and better. So it just breaks my heart that this occurred. Nonetheless, I still think it was worth sharing with you guys. I'm really glad I did. I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope you got something positive out of it.

Definitely make a point to tune in to watch Anthony compete in Rio. It's going to be amazing. And also definitely check out his book, Chasing Water. You can use the Amazon banner ad to buy it. You can find that banner ad on any episode page at richroll.com. In fact, you should use that banner ad for all of your Amazon purchases. It doesn't cost you a cent extra. It's just a great, simple, free way to support our show. And on the subject of free ways to support the show beyond the Amazon banner ad, you can spread the word with your friends

and on social media like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Please rate the show and leave a review on iTunes. That's huge. And while you're on the iTunes page for the show, make sure to subscribe if you haven't already. What else can I tell you? Well, for all your plant Power swag and merch needs, go to richroll.com.

We got signed copies of Finding Ultra and The Plant Power Way. Hey, if you're new to the show, do you know that I wrote a memoir? It's called Finding Ultra. Check that out. I will sign it for you if you buy it off my website. And I'm really proud of it.

It's a really good book. It still continues to sell. It came out in 2012. People are still discovering it. It's a really good book. It still continues to sell. It came out in 2012. People are still discovering it. It's finding new audiences and that is really a cool feeling for me. In any event, we also have cool Plant Power t-shirts.

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on Twitter and Instagram. And on Snapchat, it's I am Rich Roll. I also want to thank everybody who helped put on this show today, Jason Camiolo, for his audio engineering wizardry and production. Thanks so much, Jason. Also, he does the interstitial music. Some of those are original compositions by him, which are really awesome. He's an amazing musician. I also want to thank Sean Patterson for his help on graphics. He's amazing. Chris Swan puts in a ton of work on the

show notes. He also assists on the production, gives insights on everything that I need to make this show the best that it can be. So thank you, Chris. Theme music, we're back to the original theme music. That's by Anna Lemma. I'm going to have Harry do a revised spin on this original music, maybe update it a little bit. Not too crazy. He's not going to go too far afield, but maybe improve it, tweak it, et cetera. So stay tuned for that. And just, you know what? Thanks all of you guys for

the support. Without you guys, the audience, this show is nothing and I am nowhere. And I'm very in touch with that and aware of it. So I appreciate you guys tuning in week after week for this show. And I'm going to leave you with one final thought. To me, what makes Anthony's story so powerful was all the work he put into the why of what he does. When he couldn't answer the why of what he does, he had to stop doing what he was doing until he could figure that out.

And it was a journey that for him took years to answer. And now I think you can look back on that as his greatest strength. So my question to you is, why do you do what you do? And if you don't know the answer to that question, you got to commit to finding it, because that is the key that's going to unlock the best trajectory for you. See you guys soon. Peace. Plants. plants. Thank you.