Send-Off Speech For Paris Olympic Swimmers

Courtesy: Charles Hartley

You were little kids not long ago. You joined your local swim teams as eight and unders just trying to figure out how to do freestyle for one length of the pool, worried if you could finish, wondering what place you would come in.

It may have made you nervous. You may have told your parents you didn’t want to be on the swim team any longer. But for whatever reason you kept going and when you entered the 10 and under age group you started learning how to do all the strokes: freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly.

You kept waking up at 6 or 7 am for summer morning practices where the water felt so chilly as you got in only a few minutes after waking up. Instead of sleeping in like many of your non-swimming friends, you went swimming, back and forth, head underwater, feeling some level of discomfort and weariness and the inevitable question: why am I doing this?

This ritual grinded on and on for years through high school and college. Competition stiffened. Pressure mounted. Doubts about how good you could be were unrelenting.

Then one day, which was just a few weeks ago, you found yourself at the US Olympic Trials and qualified for the team.

Now here you are one week away from swimming in the Olympics. An entire country, yours, will be able to watch you swim; the whole world, actually. They may not know your name now but they might after your race if you win a medal especially if it’s Gold. Your face could be on the cover of the New York Times the next morning for all Americans to see.

It will be your moment. A moment so strikingly short compared with the thousands of moments you endured preparing for that one moment to be recognized by your country.

Whatever place you finish, know this: You are worthy of this opportunity. No one makes the U.S. Olympic swimming team without unbelievable dedication. For that alone you are already a champion. You don’t have to do anything else. You won and are a winner for life.

But I want you to think about this. You’re young, still, and all this is happening to you and it may seem like it’s coming at your so fast. This is how life often is; you work at something and then suddenly you find yourself on the big stage and it’s time to perform at your best.

One day you’re going to be 60 years old and you’ll look back on what’s about to happen in Paris and it will seem like a long time ago, another life you lived.

The honest truth is in 2068 people won’t be much interested in what you did in the 2024 Olympics. Time will have moved so far beyond 2024 that it will be mere history.

You will reflect and won’t remember many details. But you will remember the feelings, how nervous you were, how inspired you felt, what your mood was like after the race, and how much pain you felt in your shoulders and legs.

You will look back and realize that you were once one of the fastest swimmers in the world. It won’t be hyperbole.

Not then and not now.

You’re one of the greatest who has ever swam.

Forty years from now you will feel good that you ascended so high.

You will remember your teammates on the trip, the unexpected and funny conversations and encounters that happen at the Olympics among athletes, and the people on the team you didn’t expect to become friends with that you did.

You just clicked with them for some reason you still won’t be able to fully articulate forty years later. And you will be so glad you remained friends with them for the rest of your life.

Your experience, you will remember, was not just about America. It was global in all its grandeur and mystery.

At the Opening or Closing Ceremony, or both, you’ll remember meeting one or a few athletes from other countries, maybe France or Portugal or Sudan or the Philippines. You will have stayed in touch with them your whole life after connecting at the 2024 Olympic Games, made visits to their homes and they came to see you in America. You got to know their spouses and kids. You will have made lifelong friends and, at the time, didn’t realize they would be.

You will look back and realize that it wasn’t really about being a great swimmer that stays with you four decades later. It will be your appreciation for the friends you made while there that enriched your life in a deeper and more important way than winning an Olympic medal.

You will realize that the greatest happiness in your life wasn’t being able to tell people 40 years later you won a medal. You will treasure more the people you became friends with while there who stayed your friends.

You will come to understand that relationships with other people are the biggest reasons you will have enjoyed a fulfilling life.

About Charles Hartley

Charles Hartley is a freelance writer based in Davidson, NC. He has a masters degree in journalism and a masters degree in business administration.