Jason Lezak, the anchor, one year later
via
May 23, 2021, 8:59 PM
7 min read
Share to FacebookShare to TwitterEmail this articleWhat were you doing a year ago tonight?
Don't bother trying to recollect. I'll tell you.
You were on your feet screaming at your television -- waking the kids, scaring the pets, alarming the neighbors. Or you were high-fiving perfect strangers at a sports bar. Or, if you were on a JetBlue flight equipped with DirecTV, you were erupting in cheers at 38,000 feet.
Jason Lezak has heard all the stories of what he provoked on Aug. 11, 2008, in America.
"When you hear how people reacted," he said, "you know it was something special."
Oh, it was special. Lezak's lift-a-car-off-a-baby adrenaline surge delivered the first unforgettable moment of the Beijing Olympics. His epic, impossible, 4x100-meter freestyle relay anchor leg boiled the Water Cube in Beijing, humbled some haughty Frenchmen, and propelled Michael Phelps toward Olympic history.
Phelps went on to own the Games, of course. They were his coming into China and going out, with a record eight goal medals in his carry-on luggage. But he couldn't have won them all without winning that relay, his second event of the meet.
And the Americans would not have won that relay without the greatest come-from-behind swim ever, courtesy of an unsung supporting actor who cannot believe it's been a year since Beijing.
"Time has gone by really quick," Lezak said.
One hundred meters has never gone by more quickly than it did 365 days ago. Lezak's relay split that day was a preposterous 46.06 seconds, the fastest time in human history.
That moment has propelled the quiet Californian into previously unimagined adventures. He's become a part-time corporate speaker, delivering speeches about that race and his swimming career dozens of times in the United States and abroad. He competed in the Maccabiah Games this summer, meeting the president of Israel and becoming the first competing athlete to light the flame for those Games. And he's become a little more recognizable while walking the street, thanks to those 46 incredible seconds in China.
Thing is, Lezak had to be that fast for the Americans to own the world record and win the gold medal -- even a tenth of a second slower and the result would have been silver. And it had to be that fast for Lezak to gain redemption eight years in the making.
"Every time I see it, I get the same feeling," Lezak said. "The chills, the goose bumps, my heart rate gets going. It's like I'm back in the moment.
"But it wasn't all about that particular moment. There was so much leading up to that moment."
As with every good story, there is a backstory.
Until 2000, the U.S. had won every Olympic gold medal in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay. All of them. Then, with Lezak on the relay team in Sydney in 2000, the Americans were dethroned by Australia.
It happened again in 2004 in Athens, when the U.S. finished third with Lezak anchoring. He anchored other American freestyle relays that lost in international competitions as well. A point of national swimming pride had devolved into something of an embarrassment.
So when Lezak made the Olympic team last year at the creaky age of 32, he was less focused on his individual swim in the 100-meter freestyle than he was on getting America back to the top of the medal podium in the 4x100 free relay. Lezak was consumed with that event, lying in bed at night and picturing how it would unfold.
On paper it figured to be very tight between the Americans and the French, who were anchored by 100-meter freestyle world-record holder Alain Bernard. Prior to the race, Bernard reportedly said the French would "smash" the U.S. His competitor on the final leg would be Lezak.
"I knew it might come down to me and Bernard," Lezak said. "But every time I would visualize the race, it would be me being ahead and holding him off. Whenever I visualized it with me behind, I just shut it off and didn't think about it."
That thought was too daunting. Until, of course, it became reality.
When Lezak stood on the starting block in a raucous Water Cube, waiting for third-leg swimmer Cullen Jones to touch the wall, the outlook was disastrous. Bernard already was in the water in the adjacent lane. The Americans were all but beaten, facing the equivalent of a two-touchdown deficit with a minute to play.
"I just don't think they can do it," NBC analyst Rowdy Gaines said on-air to colleague Dan Hicks.
Neither did Lezak.
"I had doubts," he said. "I had to override them."
