8 — Friday, April 17, 2020
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

‘It doesn’t feel real’: ‘M’ Olympians adapting after postponement

Maddy 
Steere 
was 

somewhere over the Indian 

Ocean when her world began 

to change.

She thought she knew what 

the next five months would 

hold. For Steere and the rest 

of the Australian water polo 

team, those five months were 

carefully curated years in 

advance, every action and 

every calorie geared toward 

peak performance in July. 

That’s the month they’ve had 

circled on their calendars for 

years — for some, their whole 

lives. It’s the month of this 

summer’s scheduled Olympic 

Games in Tokyo.

But before the glory of 

Tokyo, the Australians had 

a standard training trip to 

Europe, where they would 

practice with the Italian and 

Hungarian national teams. 

That’s where they were going 

back in February, back when 

they touched down in Dubai, 

not knowing their lives were 

about to change forever.

In Dubai, a short layover 

turned into a nightmare, amid 

news that the coronavirus 

situation in Italy was rapidly 

worsening. 
Throughout 

an uncertain night at the 

airport hotel, team officials 

discussed going straight to 

Hungary, 
before 
awaking 

players to news that they were 

returning home immediately.

A 
month 
later, 
the 

Olympics were postponed, 

thousands of dreams placed 

on a year-long hold.

“It’s so hard to put into 

words how much this has 

affected all of our plans,” 

Steere said. “Every single 

day, for at least the past five 

years, I have been preparing 

to make this Olympic team.”

***

Paul Juda is one of those 

thousands. Like Steere, the 

freshman gymnast is among 

a 
handful 
of 
Michigan 

athletes potentially destined 

for Tokyo.

He was one of those whose 

life changed on that eerie, 

unforgettable Thursday in 

mid-March. The day when 

the Big Ten shuttered its 

winter and spring sports 

seasons, with the NCAA 

following suit a few hours 

later.

“I was literally making 

jokes 
about 
washing 
my 

hands that Monday and then 

that Thursday, everything 

was canceled,” Juda said. “So 

I was like, ‘Wow, OK.’ ”

Felix Auböck, a senior 

from Austria who competed 

in the 2016 games, realized 

something was off when he 

and his teammates on the 

men’s swimming team were 

in the pool, while all six of 

their coaches huddled to the 

side, a serious look adorning 

each of their faces. San 

Marino’s Myles Amine found 

out when wrestling coach 

Sean Bormet stopped practice 

to pull everyone aside and 

console 
his 
heartbroken 

team. A few blocks north, 

Juda, too, found out after a 

standard afternoon practice.

“For the seniors, I cannot 

physically 
or 
emotionally 

imagine the kind of damage 

that they felt when they 

got the news that their last 

gymnastics practice ever was 

a day in the gym,” Juda said. 

“… They lost their season, 

they didn’t have a senior 

night, they weren’t able to 

compete their last meet ever.

But for weeks, as their 

teammates returned home 

to 
cope 
with 
shattered 

dreams, Michigan’s potential 

Olympians 
had 
to 
keep 

training, for an Olympics 

they knew wasn’t going to 

happen — at least not in 2020.

That, they agree, was the 

worst part.

For 
Auböck, 
it 
meant 

swimming in the ocean off 

the coast of California after 

all pools closed. For Juda, it 

meant doing strength work 

through sickness — he tested 

positive for the flu and never 

got his COVID-19 test results 

back. For Amine, who was 

among 
three 
Wolverines’ 

wrestlers taking an Olympic 

redshirt, it meant continuing 

his training without coaches 

or facilities to guide him.

Then, on March 24, the 

International 
Olympic 

Committee announced what 

each 
felt 
was 
inevitable. 

For the first time in history, 

the 
Olympics 
would 
be 

postponed, until 2021.

Across 
the 
world, 

Michigan’s Olympians found 

out like the rest of us — 

through push notifications, 

social media and concerned 

text messages.

“It was a big relief because 

the Olympics were still going 

on but we had no pool space, 

we had nowhere to train, 

all the gyms were closed,” 

Auböck said. “… I think it 

was like a four or five day 

process until they canceled 

it and it felt pretty good, I 

think everybody was pretty 

relieved.”

That 
sense 
of 
relief, 

though, isn’t shared by all of 

Michigan’s Olympians.

Across the world, Steere 

found out in an email from 

the 
Australian 
Olympic 

Committee. Like Amine, she 

took an Olympic redshirt this 

past year to spend the fall in 

Canberra and the spring in 

Sydney, training with the 

Australian national team. But 

while Amine plans to return 

to Michigan in August for 

his senior year, such luxuries 

aren’t available in a team 

sport like water polo.

For Steere, taking another 

year off school is a mandate if 

she wants to compete in 2021. 

It’s an obvious decision for 

her, but that doesn’t eliminate 

its drawbacks. It means that 

her senior season — now 

pushed back to 2021-22 — is at 

the whims of the NCAA, and 

whether it permits a second 

redshirt. 
Regardless, 
she 

won’t graduate until she’s 25, 

a thought that gnaws at her.

“It didn’t feel real,” Steere 

said of the postponement. 

“And honestly, it still doesn’t.”

***

Two plain black chairs 

sit beside the dinner table 

at Juda’s childhood home, a 

few miles north of Chicago. 

Normally, 
they’re 
just 

that — pieces of household 

furniture.

This month, they’ve been 

transformed 
into 
parallel 

bars, part of Juda’s makeshift 

home workout space. A few 

feet away, he holds himself 

on the corner of their kitchen 

countertops, “just to feel 

some strength.”

He says his parents have 

been supportive, but it’s still 

a far cry from the amenities 

of the sports coliseum in 

Ann Arbor, where he would 

typically be training. This, 

though, is the new life of 

thousands 
of 
quarantined 

Olympians across the world. 

It’s the reason Juda says he 

knew a 2020 Olympics would 

be impossible long before the 

official announcement came 

down, but now, he has no 

choice but to make the best 

of it.

“It’s something that you 

have to realize, well I’m in 

my house trying to figure 

out what can still give me 

that mental preparation and 

that mental satisfaction of 

that sport, even when I’m 

just here,” Juda said. “And 

that’s the biggest thing, I 

think, cause there’s gonna be 

people who come back from 

this coronavirus break and 

are gonna be kinda lost.”

For athletes like Juda, the 

extra year of preparation 

isn’t without its benefits. 

In 
contrast 
to 
women’s 

gymnastics, 
18-year-olds 

competing at the Olympics 

are rare on the men’s side, 

without the added strength 

that older gymnasts have. 

Now, Juda has more time to 

develop that strength.

Amine, too, has come 

around to that school of 

thought 
after 
his 
initial 

disappointment.

“The more that I’ve got to 

think about it, I kinda love 

the aspect of being pushed 

back another year,” Amine 

said. “Because I’m really 

process-oriented and I have 

a training mindset so it’s just 

for me, I think it gives me 

even more time to develop.”

The drawback, of course, 

is that he’ll be back at 

Michigan, 
wrestling 
in 

collegiate 
style, 
rather 

than in freestyle, which 

the Olympics are contested 

in. And though he recites 

the track records of college 

wrestlers who have gone on 

to a successful Olympics, 

there’s 
the 
underlying 

understanding 
that 
if 
a 

redshirt wasn’t preferable 

for preparation, he wouldn’t 

have taken one in the first 

place.

Auböck, 
meanwhile, 

has 
larger-scale 
concerns 

to occupy his mind. He’ll 

graduate when an email hits 

his inbox in a few weeks, and 

then he’ll be out in the world.

For now, he’s staying with 

his girlfriend in California, 

but eventually his student 

visa will expire. Without 

a new one, he won’t be 

able to spend the next year 

training in Ann Arbor — his 

ideal Olympic preparation. 

Instead, he may be forced to 

return home, to a country 

that 
has 
considered 

preventing its citizens from 

traveling 
internationally 

until the outbreak subsides.

“So far, nothing is set and I 

have no idea about anything,” 

Auböck said. “That’s pretty 

much where I’m at right now, 

how my next year’s looking.”

Still, from Ann Arbor 

to Australia, one school of 

thought prevails above the 

rest.

“It’s a lot better than it 

being canceled,” Amine said, 

chuckling into the phone 

from his parents’ house in 

Brighton. “I’ll tell you that.”

THEO MACKIE

Managing Sports Editor

FILE PHOTO/Daily

Senior swimmer Felix Aubock is currently training from his girlfriend’s home in California, but he is unsure about his visa situation going forward.

FILE PHOTO/Daily

Senior Myles Amine took an Olympic redshirt in 2019-20, but he plans to wrestle for Michigan next season despite the Olympic postponement.

