Another obstacle for Olympic swimmer.
A one-year delay of the Tokyo Games is another obstacle for swimmer Adrian to overcome on road to his fourth Olympics
Olympic swim star Nathan Adrian already knew what hell looked like before the novel coronavirus pandemic spread anxiety and uncertainty around the world.
In the past year, Adrian, 31, has undergone two surgeries to treat testicular cancer. But he was determined to make his fourth Olympic team at the Tokyo Games where he hoped to compete in the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle sprints as well as the 400-meter relays.
“I was just getting to a place where my times in practice were pretty good,” Adrian said a day before the Tokyo Games were postponed until next year.
Even before the announcement, the 6-foot-6 Adrian was resigned to the fact that the Summer Olympics would be delayed. A Cal graduate with a degree in public health,
Adrian was one of the many athletes who expressed concerns about going to Tokyo this summer.
Another year will give Adrian more time to modify his training in the aftermath of the surgeries.
“We’re back on the horse and whether the horse lands me in Tokyo 2021 my journey is not done yet,” said Adrian, a five-time Olympic champion and eight-time medalist. “Just
like cancer wasn’t going to be the end of my swimming career, this isn’t the end.”
Adrian personifies the thousands of athletes who had been preparing to compete in Tokyo for the Summer Olympics and Paralympics in July and August. Each one of them has had to readjust schedules with the postponement of competitions, the closure of training facilities and in some places such as the Bay Area, Italy and France, obey government issued shelter-inplace orders.
The latest development has been another speed bump in Adrian’s pursuit of making his fourth Olympic team as one of the world’s best sprinters. He faced a serious obstacle before the word COVID-19, or coronavirus, became part of the global vocabulary.
It began in December 2018 with surgery to remove a tumor. Adrian, from Bremerton, Washington, had a second surgery a month later to remove some lymph nodes. Unlike other forms of the disease, testicular cancer can be successfully treated with a low risk of death — about 1 in 5,000 die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society.
The surgeries forced Adrian out of the pool for the longest time since taking to the water at age 4. He has recounted how surgeons cut through his abdominal wall five times. The incisions on the left side of his body have led to readjusting training techniques this past year so as not to favor his right-sided muscles.
At first, Adrian had to patiently regain strength before barreling into training to prepare for last year’s big international meets. He was not permitted to lift more than 15 pounds after the second surgery. Adrian has described lifting a can of soup over his head as a form of “weight lifting.”
But seven months after the surgeries, Adrian anchored the U.S. 4x100 freestyle relay team to a world record and victory at the 2019 world championships in South Korea.
Adrian felt grateful to participate, but winning three medals in the world championships also did not hurt.
“It beats the heck out of being home, waiting for test results, waiting for another surgery,” he told reporters.
Adrian won five more medals at the Pan American Championships in September in Lima, Peru.
Although his latest scans do not show signs of the cancer recurring, Adrian will be tested regularly for the next 18 months with MRIs and blood work. So far, he has avoided chemotherapy, but the cancer-killing drug treatment also would not keep him away from the pool, Adrian said.
“Even if there was a situation where I knew I probably wasn’t going to make it, I was still going to get up there and compete,” he said of getting to the U.S. Olympic trials that had been scheduled for June.
International Olympic Committee officials are working with Japanese organizers to finalize a date to hold the Summer Games. Until they announce a decision, the athletes’ community is in a holding pattern on when to resume training to be in peak shape for major qualification events.
Adrian said he plans to be ready whenever the fiercely competitive U.S. trials are held.
In the meantime, he has tried to do his part to help slow the growing health crisis. Last week, Adrian announced in an Instagram post that he was donating signed gear to help promote donations for the Center of Philanthropy’s COVID-19 relief fund. He also gave an East Bay hospital new N95 respirator masks. Adrian is encouraging those who have extra masks from the recent spate of wildfires in
California to donate them to local hospitals because of the shortage of gear for medical workers.
“There are so many more important things than me getting to fulfill this dream after getting over a cancer diagnosis,” he said.
Adrian feels the same anxiety as his neighbors and community. He said he felt drained during recent workouts at Cal before the seven-county lockdown order closed Bay Area swimming pools and other training facilities.
The IOC announcement to postpone the Games has allowed Adrian to hit the pause button on training. He said he might take a week off now to recover from intense training. A week away from a pool is about as much time as elite swimmers give themselves.
Since the lockdown order a week ago, Adrian has been training in a recreational pool in San Rafael with former Cal All-American Will Copeland.
A year ago, Adrian and Copeland bought the Ann Curtis School of Swimming. Their pool is 3½ feet deep, 25 yards long. Olympic-sized pools are 10 feet deep, about 55 yards long.
“It doesn’t translate perfectly, but it’s water,” Adrian said.
He also improvised at home with wife Hallie Ivester. They don’t own a lateral trainer, called a slide board, that swimmers use to help increase explosive strength. Adrian said he has been wearing socks and re-creating slide board push-ups and lunges across the hardwood floors.
But at least the Tokyo Games will not begin on July 24 as had been planned.
“It would have been very clear who had a pool and who did not have a pool, regardless of how good they are,” Adrian said of Olympic swimming. “What about a 2020 Olympics would have been fair when the medals were won by the ones who were able to train?”
He and fellow athletes will not have to worry about that anymore.