Olympic Dream Fulfilled for Roswell’s Hersey
By Tim Altork / STAFF
 Kathleen Hersey, seen here at last year’s Pan Am Games where she won four gold medals, trains at Roswell’s Swim Atlanta club and will represent the United States in the 200 meter butterfly at the Beijing Olympics in August. |
When Kathleen Hersey’s hand touched the wall in Omaha, Nebraska, for the third and final time, she felt more than just the cold, wet cement that awaited her the previous two. She felt the warm fulfillment of a lifelong dream. She felt what it was like to be an Olympian.
The Roswell resident and recent graduate of Marist High School in Dunwoody embodied the “second is first” mentality of the Olympic trials earlier this month when she claimed second place in the 200 meter butterfly and punched her ticket to Beijing for the 2008 games in August.
Hersey has been a player on the world stage since she won four gold medals at the Pan Am games in Brazil last spring.
At last month’s trials she competed in three events – the 400 meter individual medley (IM), the 200 meter IM and the 200 meter butterfly.
She fell just short in her first event, the 400m IM, with a fifth-place finish. (The top two finishers in each event earn a spot on the Olympic team.) And she and coach Mark Minier used the second event, the 200m IM, as a tune up for her final and most promising event.
“[The 200m IM is] not her best event and she just didn’t do too well in that,” said Kathleen’s mother, Regina. “That made us a little extra nervous, although the fly leg of both the 400 and 200 IM were very good. So we still carried the hope that she was going to make it.”
Thursday’s 200m butterfly final held Kathleen’s last, best hope for making the Olympic team. She entered the trials having posted one of the top five times in the world in 2008 in the event, so if there was a moment that lent itself to cautious optimism this was it.
“I’m really excited that she made the team,” Minier said. “But the expectation was that she would make it.”
The friends and family who had gathered were on pins and needles as the moment of reckoning approached. That’s when Minier approached Regina and her husband Brian and offered them a glimpse into the immediate future.
“He is like a magician,” said Regina. “He sort of predicts things with such accuracy that it’s scary. And then he came up before the finals and said, ‘I think she’s going to do it. I think she’s really ready.’ So that gave me a little level of confidence because he’s always been so right. And he was.”
If doubt ever crept in to Minier’s thoughts after Kathleen’s shortcomings in her first two events, he never let it show. But Minier’s outward confidence hid the fact that he had had some restless nights in Omaha trying to process the magnitude of the situation.
“There’s an enormous responsibility when you have an athlete that’s that highly ranked because everybody’s looking,” he said. “Everybody the last four months was like ‘Why isn’t Kathleen swimming faster? Is she going to make the team?’”
Minier knew that Kathleen was ready and focused, but he saw a hint of nervousness in her when she was on the platform before the race. Then when she got out to an unusually fast start, Minier began to fear that she would burn out too quickly. But Hersey steadied her pace, and by the time she made the turn for the final 50 meters it became clear that second place was hers to lose.
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“It seemed like it took forever for her to put her hand on the wall, but when she did it certainly felt really good,” said Minier. “I can’t imagine what it felt like for her, but I felt like an enormous weight lifted from my shoulders.”
Hersey finished .58 seconds behind winner Elaine Breeden and 1.73 seconds ahead of third-place finisher Kim Vandenberg.
What happens next
Hersey will spend the next week in Palo Alto, Calif., with her fellow Olympians before flying to Singapore on July 25. They’ll spend about a week in Singapore before departing for Beijing and preparing for the games, which begin on August 8.
Minier said he is definitely making the trip to Beijing while Regina and Brian Hersey are on the fence about it. Brian Hersey is in a wheelchair and they are unsure of the handicapped accommodations in the aquatic center.
“We’re trying to find out if there’s going to be a handicapped seat available for my husband,” Regina said, “because we don’t want to go there and watch it on television.”
Minier will definitely be in Beijing but his role in coaching Hersey will be reduced. He has written a training plan for Hersey and given it to the Olympic coaching staff. And she will follow that for the next few weeks. But Minier is confident in Hersey’s ability to fly solo when the time comes.
“At this point in Kathleen’s career, I help her during warm up and then after that she pretty much goes on her own and does her own thing,” he said. “She’s pretty self-sufficient, so she knows what she needs to do.”
To hear Minier talk about it, the hardest part is over for Hersey.
“I don’t think there’s as much pressure on her at the Olympic games as there was for her to make the team,” he said. “American swimmers tend to be a little bit more relaxed at the games because it’s just so difficult to make the team.”
And of course, the biggest question of all remains can Hersey find her way to the medal stand? Her top-five time in the 200m butterfly automatically puts her on the list of serious medal contenders. But there will have to be a favorable series of events if she’s going to find herself on that platform listening to the Star Spangled Banner.
“I can’t even begin to visualize how that would be. But she’s certainly capable of doing that,” Minier said. “She’s more than capable of going there and winning the event. But she’s going to have to be great and some other people are going to have to be less than great. But if she takes care of her own business she’ll be very good.”
Regina said that her daughter tends to thrive when the stakes are highest, and that the bright lights of the Olympic stage could bring out the best in her.
“I think being on the U.S. Olympic team is going to give her an extra push,”