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Six: After all the swimming experts predict she might not win Gold in the 400-meter freestyle, Katie Ledecky will out-touch Ariane Titmus and Summer McIntosh. Katie will show us — for the hundredth time — that she’s the most amazing female swimmer ever and that, when she is doubted, out-toughs her most formidable opponents. She will stand atop the Gold Medal podium with tears in her eyes and we will look at her and wonder how she became who she is, what made her of all women the greatest swimmer ever, what’s inside her mind and heart.
After the race she’ll be humble as she always is, complimenting Ariane and Summer, her humility impressing us. She will forever be mysterious and marvelous, adorable and revered, America’s Leading Lady.
Five: Super-on-the-rise swimming star Leon Marchand, from France, will break one world record during the Games and win two Gold Medals. But Carson Foster will dig deep into his pain tolerance storage system and out-touch the heavy favorite, Marchand, in the 400 individual medley.
If you saw the U.S. Olympic swimming trials you know Foster is ready to seize this opportunity for entering the realm of everlasting immortality by winning the Gold against the guy who has broken the world record in the 400 IM previously owned by the incomparable Michael Phelps. All of America will know who Carson Foster is – and fall in love with him — once he upsets the fantastic Frenchman.
After the race Foster will tell us how badly he felt during this most awful feeling of many awful feeling swimming events, and yet kept going fast because he realized this was his one chance to become forever a swimming legend by winning. On the podium he will cry and so will we.
Four: In the 100-meter breast-stroke Nic Fink will do the unthinkable: beat Adam Peaty in an Olympic breaststroke event which he hasn’t lost in the past two Olympic Games. Fink, 31, has as much experience as just about any American at these Olympic Games – and a wealth of talent – and knows how to speed up in the last 25 meters of a race.
He’s got a knack for willing himself to touch the wall first. Peaty will be ahead most of the race but at the end Fink will finally get his Gold after a decade of non-stop pursuit of this lofty goal. On the podium he will hold his young child and we will think about fatherhood and swimming and how to become world-class at both.
Three: There will be a load of hype about Canadian swimming star Summer McIntosh and she’ll win medals. But Kate Douglass, Miss America of the Paris Olympics, will rise even higher and be the bigger star winning Gold in the 200 breaststroke and 200 individual medley.
On the front pages of online news sites and national newspapers across this country you’ll see her uplifting smiling face standing on the top podium and all in this country will say to ourselves: “that Kate Douglass is super cool; how proud we are that she’s an American.”
Two: Not that anyone truly expects this, but I’m telling you right now that Jack Alexy will win Gold in the 100-meter freestyle out-touching ascending American star Chris Giuliano, a one-two splash for Americans.
The two will embrace in the pool afterward overcome with jubilation and a sense of wonderment. Alexy has been rising to the top of the swimming world for several years and has been a phenom since he was seven years old swimming for the Bernardsville Pool in New Jersey.
Guys from New Jersey are made with tough minds and bodies and have come through the rough living of the Northeast where time is short and patience shorter, conversations are terse and abrupt, transactions are quick, and sympathy not readily available.
Growing up in jarring Jersey will have hardened him to the obstacles and competitors in this race and it will be his moment at the top of the podium with the Star Spangled Banner blaring across New Jersey.
One: If you’re American and believe in what it stands for – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — then you’re already in love with Caeleb Dressel. Your love will intensify watching him lead in the first leg of the four by 100 freestyle relay – a bat out of hell survival sprint for national pride.
He’ll crush the water and get our American guys the lead; the next three will hold onto it not wanting to let down their guy Caeleb, and the American men will hug and shout after winning the Gold in what has been, and will be in Paris, one of the most spectacular swimming events always and will be until the end of time.
Caeleb will get another Gold.
He will weep.
And so will we.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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