In 2004, the United States and Australia — then swimming’s two powerhouses — faced off at the Summer Olympics in Athens. Four years earlier in Sydney, the American men had lost to the Australian men on their home field in one of the sport’s marquee events, the 4-x-200-meter freestyle relay, a race that the Australians, anchored by the legendary Ian Thorpe, had dominated for seven years.
In Athens, where the American men’s basketball Dream Team played to stunning mediocrity, the message to Team USA’s male swimmers was clear — shut down the Aussies and take back pride of place. The relay team would be led by Michael Phelps — on his way to six gold medals but not yet the supernova Phelps of the Beijing Games four years later — and his friendly rival, Ryan Lochte, who has the second most Olympic swimming medals of any man but at that time was even less of a known quantity. They were joined by Peter Vanderkaay and, swimming the last leg against Thorpe, Klete Keller.
A big, playful guy, Keller was a powerful swimmer though not quite in the Phelps/Lochte league. Still, as John McEnroe once observed of his rivalry with Björn Borg, it’s not as important to be the best as it is to beat the best. In Athens, Keller gave it all he had and defeated the mighty Thorpe by 0.13 of a second. That’s right — of a second. Experts like Swimming World’s Andy Ross would call it one of the greatest relays of all time and the team of Phelps, Lochte, Vanderkaay and Keller would remain undefeated.
Indeed, so brilliant was that relay that it inspired one of the races in my first published novel, “Water Music,” the initial offering in my series of books about power, rivalry and dominance, “The Games Men Play.” I’ll never forget that race, that team and those guys. But time really is another country. Phelps would go on to fulfill his promise and more, then successfully battle two greater foes — drinking and depression. Lochte, a lesser light but a swimmer of ravishing beauty, would see his sponsorships and finances fizzle over a drunken incident at the 2016 Rio Games in which he participated in an act of vandalism and falsely reported a crime in which he tried to paint himself as a hero.
And Keller? Well, what can you say about Keller? For there he was at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Jan. 6, standing amid insurrection, sipping water and sporting his Team USA jacket as if he were about to take on the Thorpe of old.
Of all the many questions that have haunted Americans throughout the four years of Donald J. Trump’s presidency — which mercifully ended at high noon Jan. 20 as Joseph R. Biden Jr. took the oath of office to become the 46th president of the United States — perhaps none is more compelling than what makes his supporters tick. Some, to be sure, are out for their wallets. Some are racists reacting to the trajectory of American whites becoming a majority-minority by mid-century. But others are just lost. Divorced, sometimes homeless, with no clear career path after a series of failed sales positions, Keller is among the last.
“He was a lost soul, long before the Trump thing,” swimmer-turned-commentator Rowdy Gaines told The Washington Post. “He hit some hard times where he went through some things in life that probably wouldn’t be real good for anyone. Sometimes when you get lost, you become a follower instead of a leader.”
“Within a matter of a few years, I went from Olympic gold medalist to husband, homeowner, guy with a series of sales jobs — life insurance, software, medical devices, financial products — and father of three, and I had a really difficult time accepting who I was without swimming in my life,” Keller said. “I really struggled with things. I didn’t enjoy my work, and that unhappiness and lack of identity started creeping into my marriage.”
And into a political activism that was in turn ultimately swept up into the maelstrom of an incompetent, malignant narcissism binding Trump to his followers — the unending grievances and sense of entitlement; the lack of any personal boundaries or sense of responsibility; the constant demonization of anyone deemed “the other,” from the most vulnerable child at the southern border to the most powerful opponent; and, above all else, the refusal to accept any reality in which leader and followers were anything but right all the time.
People probably assume that narcissists have big egos, but what they really have are small, damaged, insecure egos and little sense of themselves. The latter is most frightening, because if you don’t know who you are, then what’s the point?
You figure that they’re raised from an early age to think they’re special, probably by one parent trying to compensate for the brutal, hypercritical other. So in one sense they think they’re great but in the other, there’s the nagging sense that they really aren’t, necessitating a kind of endlessly shifting truth to maintain the illusion. It’s not a huge leap to get from there to the moment where a bunch of white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and militia members thought they were starring in some kind of patriotic movie that existed only in their minds.
Now like all good little narcissists, they’re turning on one another and their fearless leader, saying Trump egged them on. But what they don’t understand is that a narcissistic leader bullies and manipulates others into doing the dirty work — and taking the fall. Now that the articles of impeachment have been delivered by the House of Representatives to the Senate, yet again, will Trump evade justice, yet again?
There are many who think there are not enough Republican votes to convict. But might not Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell think it’s time to find 17 votes in his caucus to convict and rid the Republicans of Trump for all time? It’s a gamble. Trump still has his supporters and is threatening to start his own MAGA Party, which would ensure the Democrats the White House for years to come. Still, surely it’s time to take the risk.
Meanwhile, others, like Keller, have finally seen that there are some risks that are not worth taking.. He told one of his former coaches that he, Keller, had let him down by his behavior.
The swimmer and his fellow insurrectionists have let us all down. But their failure is also the failure of an educational system and a society that does not prepare its citizens to think critically, to see beyond the glory days of the starting block, to understand that being a hero and playing at one are two different things.
It is the failure of our collective imagination.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/01/15/klete-keller-capitol-olympic-swimming/