At 17, Larsen Jensen was on the cover of Swimming World magazine, with the headline “The Next Great American Distance Star?”
I don’t usually approve of question marks in headlines, but, in this case, the punctuation acknowledged a reality—that there were astonishingly high expectations that would be hard for anyone, let alone a small-town teenager, to meet. Jensen loved pizza and Zoolander, and spent the little free time he had with friends or on the computer. But he'd also just done the seemingly impossible, breaking the long-standing American men's 800 meter freestyle record. The 2003 article proved prescient. The following summer in Athens, Jensen won an Olympic silver medal in the demanding 1500 meter freestyle, beaten only by legendary Australian swimmer Grant Hackett.
