DAVIS: The challenge is going to be if he can hang on to his lead. If he gets tired and doesn’t keep up this pace during the freestyle lap, he’s done. A number of the swimmers in this field are faster freestylers.
O’TOOLE: The trick is to get a wide lead over the rest of the field now, on his best stroke, so that no one can catch him. That certainly seems to be his strategy.
DAVIS: It’s a good lead he’s building. About half a body length now.
O’TOOLE: I never thought we’d see this. He looks great in the water. The crowd is going bananas.
DAVIS: He’s almost an entire body length in front of the rest of the field going into the last lap. Right at the world-record pace.
O’TOOLE: I don’t think he’ll hold on to that wide a lead in the last lap, but it’s going to be an amazing finish.
DAVIS: And we’re into the last lap. Flood is still ahead by a good amount, but LeBlanc is gaining on him. And here’s Hsu in Lane Eight. He wants that medal too.
O’TOOLE: McKeown is falling back. He was in third going into that last turn, but he’s fallen off the pace.
DAVIS: I can’t believe it! Flood is still in the lead. LeBlanc is right behind him, swimming hard. He’s closing up that lead, but I think it’s going to be Flood as we move into the last twenty-five meters.
O’TOOLE: It’s the Olympic Games! Anything is possible!
DAVIS: LeBlanc is coming up on Flood. I don’t think he can catch him, though. And it’s… it’s Flood!
O’TOOLE: I don’t believe it. Isaac Flood wins gold! LeBlanc gets the silver and Hsu gets the bronze.
DAVIS: That was amazing. Let’s take another look at the start. Do you see how Flood explodes off the block? He’s off and in the water almost immediately, and he stays underwater until about the ten-meter mark. You’ll see, McKeown has already taken two strokes by then. Flood conserves his energy, but he still looks great in this butterfly lap. He gets his arms over his head but keeps most of his body in the water, and he’s not kicking very hard.
O’TOOLE: But he won this race in the breaststroke. That’s his bread and butter. He just flies through this lap, opening up a wide lead over everyone else in the field.
DAVIS: And then he beats everyone to the finish.
O’TOOLE: Isaac Flood showed us, never count him out.
ISAAC FLOATED at the end of the pool, still not believing he’d actually pulled it off. His time, 4:05.8, was off the world record, which he remembered was 4:03-something, but that was still faster than he’d swum in practice in months. Somewhere, Adam must have been apoplectic.
He got out of the pool. He knew it would be bad form to dodge reporter Mindy Somers standing near the locker room entrance, so he let himself be maneuvered into the camera frame as the rest of the swimmers talked to reporters or filtered back to the warm-up area.
He could not catch his breath—his whole body felt like it was on fire, and his stomach was unsettled. But the burn felt good. He could still do this.
Mindy Somers was vaguely familiar, but Isaac couldn’t put together if she was a former swimmer or just a sports reporter who’d been kicking around the network’s pool of commentators for a while. But she was definitely American, given the network logo on her bright pink polo shirt and her accent.
“Congratulations, Isaac. How do you feel?”
“I feel good,” Isaac said. “I feel really good. That was a great swim.”
“That was your seventh gold medal and your tenth medal overall. And it looks like you’ll have a shot at even more medals. How do you feel about your odds here?”
Isaac hated answering these questions, and he still hadn’t caught his breath, so he panted through his canned answers. “I like my odds. I’ve been training hard for over a year.”
“And I hear you’re doing a leg in the four-by-one-hundred relay.”
“Yeah, they decided I should be on the team, I guess.”
“That final is coming up in about an hour. Are you good for it?”
Isaac shook out his arms. “You know, I really am. I’m gonna go get in the warm-up pool to stay loose, and I should be good.”
“Then I won’t keep you. Congratulations again.”
Isaac nodded and walked off.
When he walked into the warm-up area, the gathered American swimmers and coaches shouted and cheered for him.