Eye on the Prize: Three Star Athletes On the Winding Road to Tokyo

As was the case for all the things else, the schedule for the 2020 Olympics didn’t go as deliberate. Initially of March 2020, Simone Manuel, who gained two gold and two silver medals on the 2016 Rio Olympics and was planning on persevering with her streak in Tokyo, had simply completed up a swim meet in Des Moines whereas speaking to her mother. Rumors in regards to the virus have been flying. “My mother was saying, ‘Must you be taking photos with followers? Must you be signing autographs?’  ” Manuel, 24, remembers. Three days after she received again to her dwelling in California, the pool she skilled in closed up, the 2020 video games nonetheless theoretically on. “And no one had a plan,” she says.

A gymnastics model of that occurred to 18-year-old Sunisa Lee, who goes by Suni. A veteran of the U.S. workforce that gained the gold on the 2019 world championships in Stuttgart, Germany, Lee was practising her uneven-bar magic at her fitness center within the suburbs of St. Paul sooner or later and doing Zoom exercises at dwelling the subsequent. Time stood nonetheless—till it didn’t. “It’s loopy how briskly the time has gone,” she says.

One after the other, athletes all over the place concocted new methods to coach or resurrected outdated ones. In Florida, Lyles labored out on grass and on weekends took up roller-skating—a passion that originally shocked his trainers, till they noticed that it was much less about pace and extra a couple of vibe. “I discovered {that a} bunch of my buddies, like, love to roller-skate. I really received fairly first rate.” Lee began working along with her teammates, open air, and cooking along with her mother, indoors. “It’s simply a lot more healthy,” she says. (She stories, additionally, that it tasted nice.) Due to her coach, Manuel managed to discover a yard pool seemingly designed for her wants: two lanes, with poolside race clocks and beginning blocks. “You’re in California, and you’ve got actually massive swim and water-polo followers, so all people has these huge swimming pools,” she says. Was she stunned at such a made-for-closed-swim-centers setup? “Sure,” she says, “however on the identical time, if this have been to be anyplace, it might be in California!”

The pool’s homeowners donated its every day use to Manuel and her former Stanford teammate Katie Ledecky, however the preliminary rush of lucky emotions gave solution to extra difficult feelings within the shut-down world. “Typically I felt a bit of responsible,” Manuel remembers. “It was laborious doing it figuring out that the Olympics have been postponed. You undergo these roller-coaster feelings—you’re considering, Ah, it’s one other yr to get higher, and the subsequent you’re like, However I used to be prepared for it proper now.” She did her finest to maintain issues in perspective, however like everybody, she missed the least extraordinary issues, like a visit to the mall or to the nail salon—and in case you comply with her on In­­stagram, you already know that she is just not fooling about her nails, a tiny element that makes her picture finishes much more spectacular. Luckily, swimming is a sort of remedy for her, however Zooming along with her mom and father in Texas didn’t exchange hugging them. “I went on walks, and I’m not a walker!” Did she flip into one? She breaks into laughter. “No!”