Making Waves. Chris Epting
in sports when those responsible for competitive swimming were either naive or chose to turn a blind eye to the entourage of cheats invading the pool decks and playing fields of international sport.
Shirley competed during the darkest years of sports—a time when the Eastern Bloc countries, especially East Germany, created an elaborate sports system that force-fed performance-enhancing drugs to its elite athletes.
The World Anti-Doping Agency and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency weren’t established until after the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Sadly, the absence of extensive testing, both in and out of competition, during Shirley’s active years and beyond left the sporting world vulnerable to those determined to cheat.
In 1973, I covered the first-ever FINA World Swimming Championships in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, for ABC. Contrary to how countries traditionally emerge as sports rivals, the East German women’s team came out of nowhere to dominate the competition. What we witnessed was the emergence of a sinister sports machine that threatened to undermine all that is sacred in sports. The East German women were used as experimental guinea pigs in an effort to showcase a communist system using sports for political gain.
Caught up in this collision course of fanatical Cold War gamesmanship were the innocents. Shirley was one of them. Before the 1976 Montreal Olympics, she had become America’s golden girl. The media burdened her with the expectation of equaling Mark Spitz’s seven-gold-medal haul during the 1972 Munich Games. This was unfair and set Shirley and her teammates up for failure, especially given the East Germans’ steroid-infused performance.
As someone who covered those Games for ABC, I could only hint at what was going on behind the scenes. With no extensive drug testing, I could not accuse the East Germans outright of cheating. It was painful to witness the international press eager to beat up on our women’s team—especially Shirley, because she did not win any individual gold medals. It was frustrating to watch what little support both the U.S. swimming and USOC executives provided to our brave athletes when they finally began to point fingers at the East German team as the Montreal swimming events drew to a close.
The cost of these leaders’ inaction cannot be measured on any level; their failure to protect the sport created generations of cheats both outside and inside the U.S. It also allowed the East German government to continue to abuse its own athletes, many of whom suffered lifetimes of depression, guilt, and health problems. Even after it was proven that the East Germans used performance-enhancing drugs, neither FINA (the international governing body for swimming) nor the IOC provided any sort of remedy for those whose Olympic medals were stolen from them.
Until recently, Shirley spent a lifetime disconnected from a sport and community she once trusted and loved. She was always reluctant to bask in the spotlight, preferring to let her performances speak for her. I can only imagine how differently her life would have unfolded if she had competed on a level playing field.
I’m grateful Shirley is finally telling her story. It is a cautionary tale, and one every athlete, coach, administrator, and parent should read.
Introduction
During a relay, all that has to be touching the side of the pool is the swimmer’s fingernail. And all that has to be touching the starting block is their toenail.
I keep thinking that.
Just her fingernail, and just my toenail. Those are the rules in the relay. As I’m standing on the block, watching Jill Sterkel swim toward me, that’s what I’m thinking about, because she has a slight lead right now. This tough and tenacious fifteen-year-old actually has a lead. And if I’m going to keep that lead, I’m literally going to need the best relay exchange of my life.
This is probably the loudest crowd I’ve ever heard. It’s almost surreal to be standing on this platform.
Is this really happening?
This is the last race of the Olympics and our last chance to win gold. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This is not what everybody expected. We were not supposed to be fighting for our dignity. But we are.
I’m getting ready. Come on, Jill. Hold that lead. Remember what we all talked about in our dorm room last night. What you’re doing right now is unbelievable. You’ve actually taken the lead, and that’s why the crowd is going so crazy. Nobody thought we would be in this position right now. After this insane last week or so, it’s been all about the East Germans—how wonderful and talented they are, and what a disappointment we American girls are.
Most of the girls on the team were intimidated coming into these Olympics. But now they’re just demoralized. It’s such a weird thing to walk into the locker room and find what you think are guys in there. And then it turns out that it’s actually a female swimming team, one that is now beating you day in and day out, that comes from a country one fraction the size of yours, and that, all of a sudden, is producing some of the strongest swimmers in history over the course of just a couple of years.
But hey, why should any of that seem suspicious? Why should anybody take notice except me, a Southern California girl with a penchant for speaking her mind?
We can’t help it if we’re not cheating. We can’t help it if all we do is play by the rules. I’ve been swimming twenty miles a day for the past four years. How much more was I supposed to swim? I’ve been setting what would have been world records, were it not for these grotesque mutations otherwise known as the female East German swimming team.
But right now, none of that matters. Nobody wants to hear that right now. All that matters is the lead that Jill has. Because that little lead may help produce one of the biggest upsets in Olympics history.
But we’re not there yet. I still have to close this thing out.
Focus has never been much of an issue for me in my swimming career. I know how to focus and I know how to win. Sometimes I feel like a machine. But right now, it’s a bit of a challenge to stay completely focused in the moment. If we win, will the press stop calling me names? Will it be the end of “Surly Shirley”?
If we win, will the coaches and officials and media finally open their damned eyes and start looking into this team of so-called women that look and sound like men?
Okay, Jill is getting closer. One thing that used to frustrate me was watching how swimmers would wait to wind up for the take-off until their teammates actually touched the edge of the pool. That’s a lot of time wasted. If you start your wind-up early and then dive in the air, timing the other swimmers touch perfectly, you can pick up a good deal of time.
Of course, a good deal of time is a relative term. We’re talking about a sport in which a tenth of a second and a hundredth of a second actually matter. But executed perfectly, there was definitely a chunk of time to be made on the start.
I’m not going to wait for her to touch before winding up. I’ve got to watch her closely, just like we all talked about last night, just like we play-acted in our dorm room, as we were living out the race over and over and over in preparation for this moment. Was that really just last night? It seems so long ago. I never thought those positive thinking courses they wanted us all to take would ever come in handy, but last night, they sort of did. Lying there on the bunk bed, zoning out and imagining that we were all swimming the race at the same time, it really was sort of interesting. I think it helped. And at this point, what did we have to lose?
We were using anything we could get. Even those matching rainbow suspenders we all bought. Sure, maybe it was just a gimmick, but for us, it was fun and it made us look and feel like more of a team. Walking out on that deck, everybody seemed to notice it too. So maybe it was a good idea after all.
When you’re going up against a demon team like this, never know what’s going to work. You have to try everything.
Okay, I’m focused. The crowd is beginning to fade away, and the tunnel in my mind is starting to tighten and narrow. The moment is at hand.
Jill, you are amazing.