Go Blue! Tom Dolan and Eric Namesnik moved their prickly rivalry from the Michigan pool to the Olympics, with telling effect by Leigh Montville The car was stuck in the Atlanta traffic. A line of red brake lights was ahead, no opening in sight. The first gold medal won by a U.S. athlete at the XXVI Olympic Summer Games was stuffed nicely in Tom Dolan's gym bag, wrapped in his red-white-and-blue warmup jacket, but this was a first lesson that you can't eat gold medals, kid. He was hungry. Claudia was hungry. Namesnik (above) didn't start fast enough to cancel out the blazing finish of Dolan (middle). photograph by John Biever "I have to get something to eat," he said to the driver for the 58th time. "Are we going to be able to eat when we get there?" "Claudia has to get something to eat," he said, also for the 58th time. "She really has to get something to eat. She has to swim in the morning. Can she eat while I'm doing the interview?" The destination on Sunday night was the NBC studio at the International Broadcast Center, where Dolan was supposed to do the obligatory chat with host Bob Costas. The time was edging closer and closer to 11 o'clock, and the demands had not stopped in the two hours since his hand touched the wall at the end of the men's 400 individual medley, .35 of a second in front of teammate Eric Namesnik's hand. This was the postrace spin of a champion. Apparently foodless. His girlfriend, Spanish swimmer Claudia Franco, was taking the ride with him. "Are you O.K.?" he said from the front seat of the car. "I'm fine," Claudia, who was part of the Spanish 4x100-meter freestyle relay that failed to make the final the next day, said. "No problem." A reporter also was in the backseat and had been asking questions. How many Dolans had been at the race? Maybe 30. Had he had a chance to see them? Only for a second. He had been able to vault the fence and shake their hands not long after the medal ceremony. When would he see them again? Probably not until Friday, after he swam in his five possible remaining events. "At the end of the race, Eric swam back down the course and sort of hung on the rope," the reporter said, bringing the conversation back to the race again and bringing up Namesnik's name for the 58th time. "You swam out to him and shook his hand. Did you say anything to him?" "I don't know, I don't know what I did," Dolan said and paused. "You're really working this thing with Eric and me, aren't you?" he asked. "Is that the story here?" The reporter said it probably was. Probably was? Two teammates who didn't like each other, placed in adjoining lanes, swimming almost as two congruent figures, virtually synchronized, faster than everyone else in the world, swimming the same race they had swum almost every day for the past three years, .35 of a second difference at the end ... yes, that was the story. "I guess," Dolan said from the front seat in the traffic jam in the middle of the best night of his life. His rival still rode with him. One last time. Eric and Tom. Tom and Eric. They had covered themselves in sandpaper in order to live so close for so long. The only way they could rub against each other was the wrong way. They had helped each other so much, yet shared so little. Eric and Tom. Different. Tom and Eric. Adversaries of proportions found only in some Elizabethan tragedy. Going for the same faraway but attainable prize. Swimming in the same water. Showering in the same showers. Every day. "They would kill each other with their eyes every day, if you know what I mean," Michigan coach Jon Urbanchek says. "They would give each other dirty looks. They wouldn't talk at all, but they would race every day. Twice a day." Eric was the resident prince, the logical successor to a couple of thrones. He was the hard worker, the churner from Butler, Pa., smallish for his event at 6'1", 170 pounds, but with "a great engine," according to his coach. He had spent his time in waiting at Michigan behind breaststroker Mike Barrowman, the star and 1992 Olympic gold medal winner in Barcelona. Eric had had also spent his time in waiting for his event, finishing second at the '92 Games to Tomas Darnyi of Hungary. Barrowman was retired. Darnyi was retired. Wasn't this now Eric's time? Tom was the newcomer at the school, the hotshot recruit. Six-foot-six, 180 pounds, he was a torpedo. He had spoken with Urbanchek for the first time only two weeks after Barcelona, a high school star from Arlington, Va., choosing Michigan largely because, well, largely because Eric was already there. What better daily measuring rod could possibly be found for the 400 IM than the best 400 IM swimmer in the United States? This didn't mean the measuring would be a gentle process. "Eric was older," Dolan said. "I was a freshman, but I didn't want to go through all that freshman stuff. I didn't do what those older guys wanted. I was my own person. I didn't think I deserved to go through that." Eric was quiet, never smiled much, already graduated and his eligibility used up by the time Tom arrived, but still training with Club Wolverine to prepare for Atlanta, after which he planned to retire. Tom was noisy, confident, good. There was a five-year difference in ages. Eric was tuned to easy-listening music and wanted to be a coach in the future. Tom wanted to be ... what? He liked rap music and called himself MC Mass Confusion when he played disc jockey for pals at school. He wore an earring. Grew a goatee. There was a time, early, when Eric was in control. He had set the American record for the 400 IM four times, all before Tom arrived at Michigan. The last time came in a heat at the 1993 summer nationals; in the final, Eric beat Tom to win the national title. But Tom was improving. In the spring nationals of '94 he broke Eric's record, and in the world championships in Rome that summer he set a world record of 4:12.30. He became the star. It all seemed so easy. He was glib and loose and successful. He had a tidy background story: a swimming star afflicted with asthma. He described at the press conferences after setting his records how it was so hard sometimes for him to breathe. A triumph over adversity. Eric sat next to him, breathing fine, silver or bronze, listening to the story again and again. Once in a while he was asked a question. Eric still had his moments—he was the fastest 400 IM qualifier at the trials for the 1994 worlds and he won the '95 summer nationals—but the big publicity rush was for Tom. He was media magic. He was the winner, the world-record holder. Eric mostly was the champion of lanes 7 and 8 at Canham Natatorium in Ann Arbor, where they practiced. "They'd race every day," teammate and Olympic breaststroker Eric Wunderlich, Namesnik's friend, said on Sunday night. "I'd say Eric won seven out of 10. Then, again, there was all that filthy chlorine in the Michigan pool, and maybe Tom's asthma would kick up. I don't know." "I tried to spread them around in meets, not have them face each other except in big meets," Urbanchek said. "But in practice, they were very, very competitive. There was no blood in the pool, but it was a fierce, fierce rivalry. What happened was that Eric won a lot, but Tom usually won the biggest races." In the final, Dolan (above) and Namesnik (second from right) were in familiar places—side by side. photograph by Heinz Kluetmeier In the heats on Sunday morning in Atlanta—the last day the two would ever race each other—the fastest qualifier was Eric at 4:16.21. Tom was third at 4:17.66. This, however, was only more of lanes 7 and 8. Eric, as usual, swam as fast as he could in the heats. The churner. Tom, as usual, saved himself for the final. The talent. Different approaches. Different people. "If had to root for someone in the final ... I really couldn't choose," Urbanchek said. "Tom is just so good, but Eric is like a son. He has been at Michigan for eight years. No one has done more for Michigan swimming than Eric. I suppose I would like Eric, simply because it is his last chance. Tom will have other chances." The men's 400 IM final was the first U.S. showpiece of the Olympics. Two Americans. Dominant in one discipline. There was a 1-2 strength here that did not exist for the U.S. in many events in any sport, certainly not in the pool. "I sat down to watch next to [U.S. assistant coach] Mark Schubert," Urbanchek said. "He said I must feel like I was watching a practice race with my own team, except here it was the Olympics." What would happen? The results in the first three days of swimming—one day before this race, one after—showed that anything, everything could happen in any race. Form did not necessarily hold. Ireland's 26-year-old Michelle Smith was off on a controversial roll, taking the 400 IM and 400 freestyle gold medals in times that she never had approached in two earlier Olympics. Drugs? Not drugs? It was noted that her husband of six weeks and trainer of three years, Erik de Bruin, had tested positive for steroids as a discus thrower for the Netherlands three years ago. Countering, Smith said she had been repeatedly tested for drugs in recent months and come up clean every time. The debate had begun. The Chinese women—with the exception of 100 freestyle champion Le Jingyi—were off to a bad start, not approaching previous times. Not drugs? Bad drugs? American swimming diva Janet Evans, a slow second in a slow heat, did not even qualify for the 400 free final. Done? A world record came from a Belgian, Fred Deburghgraeve, a time of 1:00.60 in the 100 breaststroke in a qualifying heat. Qualifying heat? He won the final, although he took .05 of a second longer to do it. The Americans enjoyed early success in relays, winning both the men's 4x200-meter freestyle and the women's 4x100-meter free. Individually, there were events in which gold had been a possibility—Gary Hall Jr. in the 100 free, Amanda Beard in the 100 breaststroke, Allison Wagner in the 400 IM, Tom Malchow in the 200-meter butterfly—but silver was the answer. Champions were from Russia (Aleksandr Popov and Denis Pankratov), South Africa (Penelope Heyns), Ireland (Smith). The only other race in which the U.S. evinced the same early U.S. dominance as Dolan versus Namesnik came on the third day: Fifteen-year-old Beth Botsford of Timonium, Md., beat 25-year-old Whitney Hedgepeth of Colonial Heights, Va., in the 100-meter backstroke. The women, however, were different. They were friends. Hedgepeth was Botsford's mentor. "We got together last week," Botsford said. "We decided we would go 1-2 for the U.S." Namesnik and Dolan got together and decided nothing. They simply raced. Eric's hope was to move out fast. Tom's strength is his freestyle finish. Eric had to build a big lead before that leg, especially on the first two legs, the butterfly and the backstroke. He simply didn't do it. Tom was ahead at the end of the fly by .21 of a second, but when he and Eric touched at the end of the backstroke—swimming in lanes 3 and 4—they were in a dead heat at 2:02.87. It didn't matter. The race was done. The crowd of almost 15,000 made a lot of noise and the television pictures showed the closest of races, with Eric pushing ahead of Tom by .44 of a second at the end of the breaststroke leg. But everyone who knew the situation could predict that Tom would be the winner when he caught Eric in the final 50 meters of the freestyle. His final time was 4:14.90. Eric's time was 4:15.25. Eric swam to his lonely spot on the rope, down the lane, left with the sight of the scoreboard and numbers he never could change. Tom looked at the crowd and raised the index finger on his right hand. Number 1. The applause again was for him. "Eric looked so disappointed on the victory stand," Urbanchek said. "It's funny about silver. Gustavo Borges of Brazil had silver the other night [on Saturday, in the 200-meter freestyle], and you could see his happiness just flow out of him. Eric, I think that when he watches films of this 20 years from now he will wish that he had smiled more on the stand. Silver is a great accomplishment." Eric did not believe that. Not now. As Tom was dragged here and there, hungry and jubilant, the television people finding the car to take Claudia and him to the interview with Costas—wait a minute, Katie Couric wants a few words with him before he goes—Eric talked quietly underneath the stands of the Aquatic Center. He told how he had started swimming as a kid because his sister was a swimmer and she brought home these little plastic trophies. He was six years old. He wanted those little trophies. He had been swimming for 19 years. "I was trying for the gold medal tonight," he said. "It didn't happen." The fact was pointed out that silver was a good medal. Maybe he hadn't won, but he had beaten everyone else in the world. Hadn't he? "Yeah," Eric Namesnik said, "everyone except one."