PARIS — Ryan Murphy won an Olympic bronze medal Monday night, which is both a great accomplishment for any swimmer and perhaps a slight disappointment for one of his stature. He’s won four gold medals, a silver and another bronze in two previous Olympics, becoming an absolute fixture on the podium.
Yet Murphy couldn’t wipe the smile off his face when he left the pool deck. The reason why: his wife, Bridget, greeted him right after the medal ceremony by holding up a poster that said, “RYAN it’s a GIRL.” This was a gender reveal of Olympian proportion, breaking the news to her husband in front of a worldwide audience.
“That kind of lit me up,” Murphy said, “and brought this night to a new level.”
The Olympics can be an all-consuming endeavor for an athlete, but life keeps happening around them, especially for several decorated veterans of the U.S. swim team. And it seems to be having a therapeutic, grounding effect on them. In a sport where years of grueling work can come down to margins smaller than the blink of an eye, perspective is a gift.
“Really exciting to learn I’m going to be a girl dad,” Murphy said “January of next year, my life is going to change a lot. I think up to this point, swimming has been really the most important thing in my life. Every major decision I make is with swimming in mind, and that’s going to change.”
This is so much bigger than ANY medal. Congrats Murph!!@ryan_f_murphy pic.twitter.com/uLo5YuN7Ge
— Rowdy Gaines (@RowdyGaines) July 29, 2024
On the same night the 29-year-old Murphy won bronze, fellow three-time American Olympian Lilly King finished fourth by a single one-hundredth of a second in the women’s 100 breastroke. She actually finished in a tie for fourth, one of three swimmers clustered within a skinny .01. That would be crushing to most of us, but King was surprisingly O.K. about it.
“I was feeling in a really good place tonight, and just wanted to take in the moment and enjoy the process, which I definitely wasn’t doing three years ago,” King said.
In Tokyo in 2021, King won a bronze medal in the event but was devastated by the result. At that point she’d won every major international title in the 100 breast from 2016–19, and being dethroned by raw Alaskan teenager Lydia Jacoby was a broadside to her bulletproof confidence.
“When this race happened three years ago, it completely broke me,” King said. “And I don’t feel broken tonight. I’m really super-proud of the work that I put in and the growth I’ve been able to have in the sport.”
One possible explanation for this zen outlook from one of the fiercest competitors in the sport: the 27-year-old King got engaged last month, during the U.S. Olympic Trials in Indianapolis. Life is happening to her, too.
Sunday night, 31-year-old Nic Fink finished in a tie for a silver medal in the men’s 100 breast. He was .02 away from gold, a potentially haunting margin. But a bigger picture beckons for him as well—Fink’s wife, 2016 Olympian Melanie Marsalis, is pregnant with their first child.
Eight-time gold medalist Caeleb Dressel, age 27, spent a few moments Saturday night hugging his four-month-old son, August, after anchoring the winning 400 freestyle relay. Simone Manuel, who will be 28 later this week, helped pull out a silver on the women’s 400 free relay on the same night, with her husband, Denzel Franklin, looking on. The couple had a formal wedding ceremony in December, roughly a year after a low-key elopement.
Life, happening.
None of this means these standouts no longer care about winning. They do, deeply. Another reason it’s easier to have perspective on the third day of this Olympic meet is the fact that they all will live to fight another day. Murphy and King have the 200s in their strokes still to go, plus relay duties along with Fink. Manuel has the 50 freestyle and could be called upon for relays as well.
There are more medal chances—and assuredly more medals—in their near future.
If anyone else needs a dose of new perspective, it’s casual swimming fans who have tuned in to these Summer Games expecting an American tidal wave in the water. For those who turned on the TV expecting to see Murphy and King and anyone in stars and stripes rolling to easy gold medals, they weren’t paying attention to the early rounds in these events or the overall global shifts in the sport.
The women’s 100 breast and men’s 100 back were destined to be desperately close. The gap between first and eighth in the men’s 100 back was less than a second in the semifinals, and the first-to-eighth spread in the women’s 100 breast was 1.23 seconds.
King knew her race would come down to “who falls apart least” in the last 35 meters. Murphy knew that the competitors he’s been battling internationally for several years would be there in the final strokes. Fractions were destined to matter.
This is because the world has gotten faster, and many of the key Americans aren’t quite hitting the times they posted as their peaks. That’s how you end up with 10 different countries winning swimming medals in a single night. The U.S. still won more than anyone else with four (one silver and three bronze), while Australia and China won two each. Romania, Canada, Italy, South Africa, Great Britain, Ireland and Hong Kong also were represented.
The gap between the U.S. and the world has closed, as has the gap between the old and the young.
Monday night showcased an inevitable changing of the guard in some events. Summer McIntosh fulfilled her very clear destiny by dominating the 400 individual medley at age 17. Nineteen-year-old Romanian David Popovici also formalized his arrival in the 200 freestyle, winning by .02. An established Australian star (Ariarne Titmus, age 23) was dethroned in the women’s 200 free by an arriving Australian star (Mollie O’Callaghan, age 20).
There is always a next wave.
“The youth and talent coming up is really exciting,” Murphy said of the sport in general.
Murphy is ready to tackle the ultimate youth movement, with the arrival of a baby daughter in early 2025. Life is happening for him and many other American swimmers, which can help make sense of the cruelly small margins that separate medalists from the rest.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Life Is Happening for the Veteran U.S. Swimmers, And It’s Giving Them the Gift of Perspective.
