Opinion Missy,not one to miss out on life
What more could a 17-year-old ask for,at 17?
Missy Franklin won 4 Olympic golds last August at the London Games and emerged as America’s pool queen. What more could a 17-year-old ask for,at 17?
She was feted and adored,but the big baby of USA’s success in the pool pined for the sort of bonhomie shared by her US team-mates from Berkeley University,California,longing for a ‘team’ she could be part of,given that her precious teens were spent in what is always a lonely routine of intense training.
This last week,the 18-year-old from Colorado got herself a team,just a month after winning a meet-record 6 gold at Barcelona’s World Championships. Missy went back looking for a normal life,joining Cal as a college freshman at Berkeley University,where she will share a dorm with a fellow first-year swimmer. ‘I want to be part of a team. I want to be part of a group of women who have the same goals and aspirations and struggles. I want to meet my future bridesmaids,’ she’s said to have told the Cal coach Teri McKeever,who happily also shares the coaching responsibilities of the US national team.
Franklin will attend two years with the Bears at her grad school ,and will be allowed to resume her professional career (and resultantly also her endorsements) only after her sophomore year,before she starts prepping for the 2016 Rio Games. She’ll be a collegiate swimmer and has remained an amateur so she can swim at college,in the process forsaking all the lucrative promotional deals. She even turned down a photo shoot request from People magazine,keeping them politely away from her dorm-life.
All her individual times at the Barcelona Worlds were just off her previous mark (one of which is a WR),and one of her relays set a new American record,so she’s one of the hottest athletes going into Rio,the Girl Phelps that America will happily lap up.
Contrast that with an Indian 18-year-old star in sport,World Cupper Unmukt Chand who fretted about his attendance at Stephen’s. Or any of the Olympians who have turned their backs on academics and campus lives because they believe the two can’t co-exist. Or,even parents who blame their reluctant support on the sports field to pressure of studies on their wards. Here’s an Olympic star who wants to do it all,and without a murmur of complaint.
(Shivani is a assistant editor based in Mumbai.) shivani.naik@expressindia.com
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