Lunch with Mary Lou

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to meet another one of my childhood Olympic heroes. Mary Lou Retton was at the Olympic Training Center representing Tyson Foods, now a major Olympic sponsor. I was working the event as a representative of the 2008 Olympic Team. My “job” was to sample some new Chinese food recipes, talk to some media reporters, and help host VIPs from Tyson.

In 1984, I was six years old. My family did not have a color TV (no I didn’t grow up in a cave, but I did grow up on a farm) so we went to a friend’s house to watch the Olympics in color. I don’t remember much about those games, but I do remember watching Mary Lou in her red, white, and blue uniform perform an amazing vault to win the gold medal. It was one of the all time greatest performances by a US Olympic athlete and Mary Lou immediately became a national hero.

When I met Mary Lou yesterday, I the first thing that struck me is that she is really short. I guess my perspective has changed now that I am 6ft tall and almost 30. She looked a lot taller when I was six. She also was incredibly gracious, congratulating me on my Pan Am win and qualifying for the 2008 Olympics. Her manager was very nice as well.

Under the watchful eye of several news cameras, I told Mary Lou about watching her in that famous American flag uniform. She laughed and said they actually thought the uniforms were a bit gaudy. I guess some things never change. There have been several times when I have been subject to team uniforms designed by people who clearly think the gaudier the better. It’s great to wear a patriotic and distinctive competition outfit, but sometimes it looks like the designer put a flag in a blender and out popped the uniform. Fortunately, the uniform designers for the last few Olympics have developed incredibly sheik uniforms for the athletes and I anticipate that we will have great uniforms in Beijing.

It’s always a great opportunity to meet someone you looked up to as a kid, but it’s especially inspirational when they live up to your idealistic image you had of them. Mary Lou is still the American hero that she was in 1984 and I felt privileged to meet her yesterday.

Meeting a hero

As I was growing up, several Olympians had a profound impact on my life. One of those athletes was Josh Davis, a multiple gold medalist in swimming. While there were multiple other athletes I looked up to, Josh was my biggest inspiration when I was young.


In 1994, at the age of 15, I first met Josh when he came through Colorado with Athletes in Action, a Christian sports club which Josh has represented for years. Josh took the time to talk to my swim team while he was out here. I was very impressed with Josh and have looked up to him ever since.


Last week, Josh stopped by the Olympic Training Center with a kid he has been working with. Josh and his athlete jumped in with me and did one one of my sets. It was impressive to see how fast Josh still swims, but more impressive to see what a man of character he is. After practice, I told Josh that I still remembered when he came and talked to my team and that he had inspired me so much with his life story. It was truly an honor to meet up with this swimming legend again. He is a true American hero and I am proud to have had the chance to meet him.

For more informaton on Josh Davis, check out his website at http://www.joshdavis.com/.

Training with the best

As most of you know, pentathlon is not a particularly popular sport in the US. Unlike some European countries, we dont have the sport culture for pentathlon here in the States. But we do have a phenomenal training facility and fantastic weather here in Colorado. So we have put our location to good use and invited two top international teams out to train with us this fall.

The Egyptian pentathlon team arrived here a few weeks ago and left today. They have two of the top women in the world and their men are also solid. It was a bit of the fire hose treatment to get back in shape with these guys here. We really only fence together, but it makes a big difference to have other athletes to bout in fencing.

The Russian team is the deepest and most decorated team in the world, and they came out here last weekend to train with us as well. The top six Russian athletes are here. To put the quality of this team in perspective, the 6th Russian athlete would easily make the World Team for almost any other country in the world. Currently Russia has the reigning Olympic Gold Medalist, the World Silver Medalist, a World Cup Final Champion, and a Junior World Champion. The Russian team will be here for the next few weeks, but I am thoroughly enjoying the chance to bout with these guys. I took three years of Russian in college, but my speaking skills are at best shaky and so communication is a bit tough. None of the Russians are proficient in English.

So the next couple weeks will be filled with as much fencing as possible as we try to hone our skills on the Russian team. Once the Russians go home, I'll start focusing more on my swim and run as we head into the winter.

Here is a picture of me fencing Andree Mosiev, the 2004 Olympic Gold Medalist, at a fencing practice this weekend. I actually got the touch on this one by hitting Mosiev right under his hand.

A Weekend with Champions

Last weekend the USOC hosted the "Reach the Peak" seminar for about 30 potential and current Olympians. We started on Friday and had sessions on Saturday and Sunday. In a nutshell, the purpose of the program was to learn how to improve our performance and to achieve your personal peak in sports.


One of the high points of the weekend was seeing two athletes whom I have tremendous respect for. The first was Brandon Slay, a gold medalist wrestler from the 2000 Olympics. The other was Dan O'Brien, the 1996 decathlon gold medalist but better known for the Reebok "Dave and Dan" commercials.


Brandon and I go back a ways. In the summer of 2000, my aunt and uncle decided to buy me a ticket to watch the Sydney Olympics because they believed it would be motivating for me in my own Olympic pursuit. My brother Justin did not want to be left out so he joined me on my way to Sydney. After a spectacular 10 day trip which culminated with an American woman winning the silver medal in pentathlon, we boarded the Sydney to LA flight for the 15 hour trip. Like good frequent fliers, Justin and I had made sure that we had window and aisle bulkhead seats to stretch our legs. When we boarded the plane, there was a girl sitting in the seat between ours who introduced herself as Tiffany. Over the course of the flight, she told us that she had been down in Sydney watching her brother wrestle. We asked how he had done and she told us he won the silver medal. Tiffany and I exchanged contact information because I was going to be in Dallas where she lived a few weeks later. When I went to Dallas, my friend Wendel and I took Tiffany and one of her friends out to eat one night.


A couple days after returning home I saw in the news that Tiffany's brother had been awarded the gold medal following a doping violation of the wrestler who defeated him. Brandon had been a resident athlete in Colorado Springs, but had taken a hiatus from wrestling following his win and came back about a year later. A number of months later I met Brandon for the first time at the OTC. I had a lot of respect for him and got to know him over the next year or so. Somewhere around 2002, Brandon decided to retire and I had not seen him since until this weekend.


So to culminate a long story, I was surprised to see Brandon on the bus to the conference this weekend. As we were getting off the bus, he said hi, I said hi, and I asked how his sister was doing. This turned several heads as a number of the other athletes questioned the wisdom of asking an Olympic gold medalist wrestler about his sister! Anyway, Brandon worked with us all weekend and here is a picture from the last day of the conference.





Growing up, I was a huge Olympic fan. I remember watching the Olympics as early as 1984 when I was only 6. By 1992, I was glued to my parents 13 inch black and white TV for the two weeks of the Games. In the lead up, Reebok decided to run a series of ads on Dave Johnson and Dan O'Brien, the top two decathletes in the US. They were expected to finish 1-2 at the Olympics and the marketing campaign was about which one would win. Dan failed to qualify for the Olympics after not clearing a single jump in the pole vault. Dave went on to win. I have read Dave Johnson's book and I met him a number of years ago. Dan's story is also very interesting. It was obviously devastating for a medal favorite to fail to qualify for the Olympics, and it was interesting to hear how he dealt with it. Dan also had a lot of tips on how to get your mind ready for competing at the Olympics. He really has the mindset of a champion and it was an honor to be able to pick his brain for a few hours. His advice was especially pertinent because pentathlon and decathlon have similar complexities. So here is a picture of me with Dan.
All in all, it was a very inspiring weekend. It is such a privilege to have two of the greatest athletes in the world take the time to mentor me and the other athletes as we strive to follow in their footsteps. Thanks a bunch guys and I hope we all make you proud some day!


I'll try to get better about posting blog updates. The Russian and Egyptian teams are here training with us right now and I'll post some updates on that over the weekend. Until next time...

Back to work

A lot of people have been asking how training is going. Here is a quick look into how I structure my season and how I will prepare for the Olympics next summer.

First, I took a long needed break from pentathlon. In the last two years, I have taken less than two weeks off. While I love to train and find practice and competition fun and rewarding, eventually it takes a toll on your mind and body. After finding out that I would not go to Beijing for the World Cup Final, I immediately put up my equipment and started my first real break of this Olympic cycle.

The term "break" can be a bit misleading though. During my break, my coaches had me stay in shape with biking and strength training. While it is important to get away from your sport during a break, it is also important to not let yourself get too out of shape.

So faced with the choice of sitting around playing on Niul's X-Box or doing something productive, I decided to go with the more responsible rout. A realtor approached me with a great deal on a fixer upper house and my dad teamed up to buy it. That gave me something to do with my time that was both productive and rewarding. I hired a couple of my teammates to come over and help and we knocked out a complete rehab of a 1700 sqft house within 3 weeks.

So now it's back to work to get ready for the World Cup season. Though still 5 months out, training starts now to be ready for those competitions. To begin, I am doing a lot of work on technique. For instance, today Alan and Genadijus (both of whom have PhDs in sports science) will be working with me in the pool. We are using cameras and some high tech testing devices to find out where I am losing speed in the water due to increased drag or decreased power. We have a 60 inch TV set up on the side of the pool so that I can immediately see the test results, watch my stroke, and make instantaneous corrections. This is a bit of an iterative process as we work to determine the optimal body position and stroke for my swimming. The reason you do this at the beginning of the season is that I have a few hundred thousands strokes between now and the Olympics so any change will feel natural by next summer. We think we can shave a couple seconds off my 200 time without much effort by doing this sort of high tech feedback.

I am starting up running also. Last season I was plagued with a strained abdominal muscle for most of the season. Through some outstanding medical care by Dr. Gary Wood and some cross training, we think that this problem will be a distant memory shortly. Taking a break has helped, but we wont know how effective the treatment has been until I get back into running. Alan Arata will probably also work on my running stride technique using video analysis on a treadmill to determine how efficient my stride is. Again, you make your changes early so that by the time of the competition it seems very natural.

Shooting will start up next week. I was finally able to procure a computerized training aid that I can use at my house to supplement my training. This program gives immediate feedback to how much pressure is on the trigger, how much the gun moves, and how steady the gun is at the point the shot breaks. All this information is displayed in real time on my laptop and helps identify problems and train correct habits.

The Egyptian pentathlon team will arrive on Monday and I expect we will have great fencing with them. Also, the New York Athletic Club recently extended me an invitation to join their team which gives me access to some of the best fencers in the country. My coaches want me to do a lot of fencing this fall when my run/swim volumes are low so that I can lay off a bit later on.

And that leaves riding. I intend to head out to Michael Cintas' place in California for an elite riding clinic in December. I have discovered that it is better for me to train riding in spurts, riding twice a day for about a week, then to train once or twice a week. I will probably visit Michael's place a couple times a year to make sure that my riding is set for Beijing next year.

So that is what my training looks like. Sorry for those of you who have been checking for an update on my blog. I'll try to do a little better now that I am back into a training regiment.