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.