ideal, it could affect those things too. Keeping your muscles warm between dives was crucial, or you’d seize up. Nerves could make muscles tense, which could cause problems when completing somersaults. Wind tended to throw off divers, who had to move their bodies to compensate, but in the indoor Aquatics Center, there was no wind, at least. Divers had to get themselves as dry as possible before diving too—hence the shammies—because dry bodies turned in the air faster.
Tim had done everything right. He’d gotten a good push off the springboard, he kept every part of his body in the correct position as he rotated through the air, he held his muscles tight, he straightened out and got his body vertical when he needed it to be, and he pushed into the water with very little splash. He’d done everything he could do and he felt good about it.
He got nines on the last dive. He stared at the scoreboard as the rest of the divers completed their final dives. A slap on his back startled him, and he turned to see Donnie, who must have snuck out of the coaches’ area. “Great job,” Donnie said. “That last dive was your cleanest. The scores should have been higher, but like I said, the judges have been sticklers.”
“Okay.” Tim could hardly speak now. His body shook as everything hit him. He was done. He’d done all he could do. He’d dived with everything he had in him. Now he had to wait for the results. Isaac, his parents, and Pat were in the audience. Isaac was here. Pat was here.
“Do not beat yourself up. I know you’re cataloging the things you did wrong, but I’m proud of you. No matter what happens.”
Tim let out a breath. He opened his mouth to thank Donnie but couldn’t. He nodded instead.
It was over now, and he’d made his body do some things he hadn’t thought it could do. Now he wanted that reward. He wanted the medal. He could taste it. But he hadn’t been flawless, and some of the other divers had been better.
Donnie was right. Tim now mentally listed all the things he’d done wrong. He hadn’t pulled his tuck in hard enough in the fourth dive, hadn’t used his core to control his second dive, his feet had been too far apart in the first dive, he hadn’t gotten a strong enough push off the springboard in the fifth dive. A hundred things could have shaved points off, and now he was left with a score that was good by any measure but maybe not good enough to win a medal. Tim could have been better. Had he pushed hard enough? Had he really performed to the best of his abilities? Doubt began to creep in as he stared at the monitors.
Perez’s last dive was nearly perfect, performed beautifully, everything positioned correctly, very little splash. Wao had a big enough lead over everyone else that he’d never be caught, even if he whiffed the last dive, which he definitely did not do.
So Tim knew even before that last score was posted that he’d fallen to third place. Bronze medal.
He couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed by that. Tim hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted the gold medal until he hadn’t won it.
A wave of emotion suddenly consumed him. He’d done something amazing, but he hadn’t been perfect—Greg Louganis had won gold in both disciplines, after all, and had been perfect—and the strange catharsis that came with the competition ending hit Tim hard.
He hadn’t been perfect, he hadn’t won gold, he’d fallen short. He could have done something else, could have tried harder, could have been better. The disappointment was crushing, but it shouldn’t have been. A bronze medal was still an accomplishment. So why did Tim feel so shitty? And panicky? He had to get away from everyone before he completely lost it.
There were cameras everywhere, but Tim refused to cry in front of them, though he felt it coming. He wanted to duck into the locker room and hide his face, but he got stopped by Diane Bell—a gold-medal-winning diver in her own right—who wanted to know how winning bronze felt.
“It feels great,” Tim said, hoping the audience at home would buy any tears or red eyes as a reaction to the chlorine in the pool or his joy at winning any medal. “That was… I mean, I’ve worked hard all week, I did those dives the best that I