HER LAST HURRAH
Tokyo Olympic Games present one more shot for former UT swimmer Madisyn Cox.
Madisyn Cox says she is looking forward to the day her competitive swimming days are over.
Considering that she has been swimming almost as long as she has been walking and is such a fierce competitor that she can’t even participate in family board games, you would think her impending retirement date might be a bit distressing.
Surely there is more to it than she lets on, but she has big plans that have been on hold for a few years now.
The Lubbock native and University of Texas graduate plans to start medical school at the McGovern Medical School at UTHealth in August.
She put her move to medicine off for three years after finishing college because she had some swimming to do.
This little thing called the Olympics. Hasn’t happened yet, but it is her destiny.
When you compete at such a high level, shutting it down is not easy.
“I know it’s going to be weird,” Cox said. “Swimming has been such a defining part of my life for so long. It’s going to be weird not having that kind of outlet, the drive and the passion, the competition that all comes with the sport.
“But I think I’ll be able to channel that in other ways. I don’t know if it’s going to be the most smooth transition, but I think at least moving (to Houston) and having med school … those new challenges will definitely help.”
Perhaps Houston will welcome an Olympic medalist to town.
In the meantime, Cox will swim in the meet of her life — the U.S. Olympic swimming trials, which begin June 13 in Omaha, Neb.
Cox is the favorite in the 200meter individual medley, an event in which she has the fastest time in the world this year and the third-fastest time for an American woman ever. She is a top contender in the grueling 400 IM.
Champagne wishes and gold medal dreams can’t come true until one conquers the competition at the trials.
Cox’s first qualified for the trials during her junior year at Lubbock High School when she was just 15 years old.
In 2016, her junior year at UT, she finished fourth in both the 200 and 400 IM, but missed out on the Rio Games as only the first- and second-place swimmers earned spots in the Games.
“Our U.S. Olympic trials is one of the most competitive meets in the world,” Cox said in a Zoom interview for Texas Sports Nation In-Depth. “It’s actually more competitive even in the Olympic Games, in some events especially.
“I’m grateful for those experiences and I know how the meet’s going to flow. I can kind of imagine it when I’m doing my prerace visualizations. I know how the pool is going to look and feel and everything like that. Hopefully that’ll help set me up for a good go at it this time.”
Cox is one of the few athletes accused of using performanceenhancing drugs who actually
took something she didn’t know she was taking that did nothing to improve performance.
A year after winning a bronze medal at the 2017 World Championships, Cox failed a drug test. It was the result of a tiny amount of a banned substance somehow showing up in a batch of a supplement she had taken for years.
The governing body knew she was innocent, but followed the letter of the law and suspended her for two years, half of what the sanction could have been.
When all the facts came out, through investigation of how the substance showed up in an unfathomably low amount, her suspension was reduced to six months, because she did not
cheat.
Cox sued the company that supplied the tainted supplement.
“It’s definitely put a little bit of a chip on my shoulder,” she said. “I went through this terrible experience, and it was truly awful.
“I’m still a little shaken. I always thought good things happen to good people. I never thought people are just unfairly accused of things. It definitely shaped my worldview, but it also, in the same sense, helped me grow as a person, as an athlete.”
Med school is the next life.
The next couple months is in large part what her life has been about.
So good for so long, this is her time.
She thought last year was her time.
Timing is vital in the Olympic cycle, which in many ways is a birth lottery. The best in the world don’t always come away with a gold medal.
In some sports, athletes are too young to win a medal in the year the Games are on, and too old to win one at the next Olympiad. They peaked at the wrong time.
Cox was ready to get it done in 2020, then the global pandemic hit, putting her world on pause.
She had to get a deferral to delay med school. In her free time, she is messing around and getting a masters degree in public health at UT.
“That was definitely a hard decision I had to come to last year: Whether or not to defer medical school and continue this dream I have for one more year,” Cox said. “It ended up coming down to this is my last opportunity to achieve my Olympic goals. This is the last shot I have.
“After this, I’m not going to be able to come back when I’m thirty-something years old and compete in the games. It’s just for swimming, especially, we peak around the age I’m at now.”
Focus has never been an issue for Cox. Her age hasn’t mattered much. She has been better than most from day one.
The pressure is on for the XXXII Olympiad, because it is her last dance, her last chance.