Track Mangoes

Of all the Olympic athletes to perform thus far, the one I admire the most is Laure Manadou, the young swimmer from France. She gleefully pranced into Athens’ 2004 games, when, at the delicate age of 17, she brought home France's first swimming gold since Jean Boiteux in 1952. France christened its darling “La Sirèn,” or The Mermaid. She took a world record and sat, it would have seemed, at the top of the world.


But two years after Athens Manaudou embarked on furtive tryst with Italian swimmer Luca Marin, one that would end in rubble. Shortly after meeting Marin, Manaudou eloped to Italy, leaving her longtime coach, and opting to train in Turin. "Between Italy and France," she declared, "I have chosen Luca Marin, the love of my life. I want to live with him and have a baby." She kept her childlike optimism up until the Turin club expelled her for what they deemed a lazy attitude. Her vaporizing relationship with Marin culminated in a dramatic poolside display, when she threw the ring Marin had given her into the water. He followed her into the changing rooms and she formally broke off the relationship that day. Within hours, nude photos and a private video of Manaudou had appeared on the internet. I still can’t decide who’s more immature. To add insult to injury, Marin began dating Federica Pellegrini—a swimmer who now trains with Manaudou’s former coach.

At the start of the 2008 games Manaudou maintained her dignity. "Anything I achieve here is a bonus," Manaudou said last week. "If it goes well, great. If it doesn't go well, it's not the end of the world. I'm not going to die as a result." But after being a brutally beaten by Pellegrini—who stole Manaudou’s world record in her own event—Manaudou is considering quitting. "I'm asking myself if it's worth continuing. I don't even have the desire to swim anymore," Manaudou told France-2 television Tuesday after placing seventh in the 100-meter backstroke. "It's tough finishing seventh or eighth."

La Sirèn de la France has become nothing more than a fish flopping on the carpet. And I love her for it. With not much left to her name but an outdated world record and a sex-tape, shoving her head in the sand seems like the only option. She’s a pop star with muscles and chlorine damaged hair. But then, isn’t that what excites us about the Olympics? The prospect of death? When I watch the mechanical Chinese gymnasts I feel no real sense of excitement because I know they will win the gold. They’re the new Russians: cold, precise, and unflinching. (Just like their government!) But when I watch the childish and cow like American gymnasts, stealing the Bronze medal from the Germans, attending their first Olympic games, my blood begins to boil. With the fall of the Hamm brothers, placing in the top five it would have been a miracle. And yet, when they clinched that medal, the rejoicing feels just that much. And death still lingers, even for young hopefuls. We know it’s over for Raj, that Justin Spring’s knees will give out soon, that Haggarty is too old, and that Sasha Artemov ultimately disappointed his father, despite his enthralling performance on the pommel horse.

The Olympics are just life expedited. Youth, beauty, and grace are valued above wisdom and sagesse. Stars are born and die within a twelve year period. “Legends” quickly fade unless they are nothing short of god coming down from the heavens and giving you a handjob. (We may recall Nadia, but can we really recall any Olympic champions pre-World War II?) And there is also something distinctly American about enjoying the Olympics. Regardless of marketing incentives, America doesn’t endorse its athletes in the same way Russia and China do. China wins because they must (pressure from the government, I can imagine, is unbearably heavy, not to mention the Olympic village was practically built for the gymnastics team). America wins because it can. What’s even more exciting is the little swimmers from Kenya, Cuba and Japan those who fight tooth and nail for the honor of swimming in the final heats, even if they know they will finish dead last.

Oh, but America has some machines of its own. What more is Michael Phelps? His “eat, sleep, swim” tenor and self-aware egotism is well oiled and seasoned for nothing else but pumping out gold medals. He openly admits he does little more than swim and play video games. At least Laure had a boyfriend. Phelps’ sweep, thus far, of 9 medals is perfectly of indicative of fat American gluttony. All eat, no flavor. Manaudou’s story is the tragic, where Phelps is the melodrame. He totes himself on par with Mark Spitz, but how can he when his face repeatedly pops up in that repulsive Visa commercial? Phelps doesn’t have to live a life outside of swimming, and chooses not to. He’s inhuman. This is, perhaps, why I can watch him make Olympic history and not bat a lash. I would be happier if a baby seal won the gold medal.

But, Laure Manadou brings a tear to my eye and a smile to my lips. When faced with the prospect pummeling Pellegrini in the pool, she failed. Tried as she did, she could not swim fast enough, hard enough, to redeem herself. How like life. How French. And now she grapples an existential question: to quit or not to quit. She’s the Hamlet of Bejing.

As far as I am concerned, death awaits her when the torch burns out. Will she oust herself or…wait? Death is so near. It’s loss that makes the gold sweet. But it’s also loss that puts gold medals in perspective. After all, it’s just swimming.