Ann Killion’s postcard
Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde has a unique opportunity — he gets to watch his daughter compete at the Olympics.
TOKYO — Who’s the luckiest person in Tokyo?
That’s easy. It’s Pat Forde, the Sports Illustrated writer.
Forde is perhaps the only parent (at least one who is not a coach), who can watch his child compete in these spectatorfree Olympics. His daughter, Brooke, a Stanford swimmer, squeaked onto the Olympic team at trials. Dad is a longtime Olympic writer who covers swimming.
While other parents are huddled around television sets across the globe, at all hours of the night and day, to watch their child’s dream moment, Forde is sitting poolside to watch his. He saw Brooke swim the anchor in Wednesday’s 4x200 freestyle relay heat. The U.S. qualified second, 2.96 seconds behind Australia. On Thursday morning, the U.S. finished second to goldmedalwinning China, which set a world record.
“The one time it pays off to be a sportswriter,” Forde said.
I met Forde at my very first Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994. Back then, he had no children. I had a 3yearold at home. He was one of my first “Olympic buddies” — part of a hilarious beerdrinking sportswriter cabal that, at least in nonpandemic Olympics, gathers late at night to trade stories and laughs about the absurdity and delight of the fivering circus.
At most Olympics since then, I’ve run into Forde. Sometime after Lillehammer and before Sydney in 2000, I added a daughter and he added two sons and a daughter. That daughter, Forde’s youngest, is Brooke.
Forde calls his daughter “the reluctant Olympian.” All the Forde kids swam in college and Brooke, an NCAA champion in the 400 individual medley as a senior last season, was the most talented of the bunch. But she had a lot of interests and didn’t relentlessly pursue an Olympic dream. Still, she made the team as part of the 4x200 free relay pool, benefiting in part from the fact that former Stanford teammate Katie Ledecky was in so many events that it opened a few more slots for other U.S. swimmers. Brooke was the last one to make the team.
Forde describes himself as having something akin to “survivor’s guilt.” His wife, Tricia, was a collegiate swimmer, who got all the kids into swimming, but she had to watch Brooke from home.
As a longtime Olympic writer, Forde jokes that he was “a sure thing for Tokyo. Brooke was not.”
But now they’re both here. The reluctant Olympian and the luckiest parent in the world. It’s a hell of an Olympic tale to tell late at night over a beer.