Chasing Greatness

I’ll never forget the moment true Canadian greatness struck my heart and changed the direction of my life forever. It was the summer of 1984. Windsor, Ontario was humid, and the Chrysler van plant was bustling. I was a university student working my way through the summer, and my task on the assembly line was simple that month. Every 90 seconds, it was my job to place a dipstick into the engine’s oil pan as the next van came by my workstation. Easy, mindless work. But my mind was busy that day with the buzz of the LA Summer Olympics. Swim races were happening live, broadcast on our cafeteria television—and I needed to see them. As you could imagine, dropping a dipstick into an engine took far less than 90 seconds. I soon figured out I could take a handful of sticks, walk backwards on the assembly line, and get ahead of my station by nearly 10 vans. This innovated process bought me enough time to race to the cafeteria for my shot at witnessing something great. Among the Canadians racing in the Individual Medley, the name I knew best was Alex Baumann. Sudbury, Ontario native and swimming machine, Baumann had been honed by elite swim coach Dr. Jeno Tihanyi. At the time, I had no idea who stood behind each of those athletes, but one day I would realize just how important a coach could be to sporting success. July 1984, Bauman and Tihanyi’s hard-earned athlete-coach bond proved reason enough to take a closer look. Skidding into the caf, I watched nervously as the CBC announcers introduced the eight finalists for the 400 metre Individual Medley Swim—and among those eight, Alex Baumann. Canadian pride swelled in my chest as a close-up of the lean, muscled swimmer filled the screen, as the Maple Leaf tattoo on his left pectoral glowed like a national beacon. The energy changed in that cafeteria as Canada took its stand for gold. Over my summers working at the van plant, I rarely heard people speaking to each other. Normally, workers would sit quietly in front of the TV or a paper on breaks. If conversation was a rarity, imagine camaraderie. When eight men launched into that pool, strangers became allies. I still remember hearing the hum of the assembly line beyond the cafeteria door as announcers Byron McDonald and Ted Reynolds called the race, as new vans chugged along sans dip-stick. The 400 IM is eight lengths of the 50-metre swimming pool, completed after 100 metres of each of the four swim strokes. After the first 200 metres, Baumann was in second place and, I realized with a thudding heart, ahead of the world record. The third swim stroke, breaststroke, emerged as Alex surged into the second half of the race. With only 100 metres to go, he pushed the world record even farther as he moved into first place. The cafeteria was wild with excitement, factory men up and cheering with every final stroke. Baumann touched the wall in four minutes and 16 seconds, simultaneously setting a new world record and winning Olympic gold. Assembly line long forgotten, I lived in the celebratory chaos that overtook the plant. We were all Canadians sharing in this incredible moment of national pride, perhaps never brought together quicker than by a world-class athlete bearing the mark of our country. Hopefully you didn’t sign the papers for a Chrysler minivan that summer of ’84—it might have been missing a few parts. The power of the Olympics, the impact a single athlete could have on an entire nation, was burned into my brain that day. And it was in that moment, when Alex Baumann touched wall, that I realized the Games were in my future. No matter how, no matter when, I would walk among the greatest athletes in the world. Baumann’s greatness sparked a reaction in me, and I began to seek it like an addict—not just in myself, but in others. Somewhere deep down, in the afterglow of Canadian gold, I vowed to find that 1 percent. There are a thousand roads to greatness. So far, this has been mine.