Anthony Ervin becomes oldest male individual swimming champion

RIO DE JANEIRO — So much can happen in 16 years.

For Anthony Ervin, the stretch between his two greatest athletic achievements — two Olympic gold medals — included a suicide attempt, a period of homelessness and a stint in a rock band. Jobs found, then lost. Too much drinking, too many drugs. Depression. Confusion.

And then, a kind of rebirth.

He stands here now, 16 years after tying to win gold in the 50-meter freestyle in Sydney, a 50 free Olympic champion again. He’s 35, a different man than he was last time he stood atop that same podium in 2000.

Even he realizes how unlikely this achievement was, after nearly a decade away from the pool and after all the ups and downs that have marked his life. After The Star-Spangled Banner played, Ervin ran up to his friends in the crowd, hugging and yelling and cheering as they hugged and yelled and cheered right back.

There was his brother, who’s always been his closest friend. A buddy who’d let him sleep on his couch when Ervin had nowhere else to sleep. His graduate school advisor who helped him return to school after all those years away.

“These are the people that made the course of my life possible,” Ervin said. “When I touched the wall, I saw a 1. Kind of the absurdity, the surrealness of it all … I smiled and laughed. It just seems so unlikely.”

Unlikely is an understatement. Ervin is now the oldest male swimmer of any nationality to win an individual gold medal at any Olympics. He’s the first swimmer to win gold 16 years after winning gold before.

And after he did it, all he wanted to do was send a message to his 6-week-old daughter, born during the Olympic trials and living in California, whom he’s yet to meet.

“I wanted to tell her the American dream is for anyone, without exception, whether you’re a boy or a girl, no matter what the shade of your skin or the shape of your eye, with no regard to who you love nor the beliefs you hold that give you peace, and for that matter where you come from,” said Ervin, who circled back to NBC for a do-over of his post-race interview to share this message. “If you want to pursue the American dream, the strength of those people will always overcome those who would attempt to limit or destroy it.”

This, coming from someone who describes his return to swimming prior to the London Olympics as this: “I sauntered onto the deck, smelling of cigarette smoke and having a pasty white tan.”

Dave Durden, Cal’s swim coach, welcomed him back and let him train there. Ervin rediscovered his love for swimming and for pushing his body to its absolute limit. He qualified for Olympic team in 2012, but had a bad start and failed to medal. Though he expressed great disappointment in that race in his autobiography that was published prior to these Olympics, he seemed at peace with the race when asked about it late Friday night.

“That was a beautiful moment for me to be in London and race in that event,” he said. “The decision to keep going after that was easy. It was completely unexpected for me to be there at all. I just wanted to swim.”

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After 2012, already in world-class shape, Ervin continued to train. He bounced around to various training groups, including David Marsh’s SwimMAC group in Charlotte back in April.

There, alongside Olympic medalists Cullen Jones, Ryan Lochte and Tyler Clary, he put the finishing touches on himself. In his 50s, he’d always gone out fast, and he’d always finished the final 15 meters strong. He’d never had a great start.

So Marsh and Ervin went back to basics. They knelt and dove in, eventually working their way up to a normal, standing dive. They worked on his footing, holding his core, everything. Anything to improve the angle and way he entered the water.

And it paid off.

Ervin beat silver medalist Florent Manadou of France on Friday night by a hundredth of a second. Ervin’s time (21.40) was more than half a second faster than his gold medal-winning time in 2000. Fellow American and former training partner Nathan Adrian, the bronze medalist, said he’s inspired by his friend’s performance and thrilled for him.

It’s hard not to be. In Ervin’s book, which included drafts of journal entries he considered cathartic to write, he discussed at length the idea of one’s identity. Sixteen years ago, he had struggled with his identity as merely a champion swimmer. He had struggled with questions of his ancestry, and that he’d been labeled the first swimmer of African-American descent to win an Olympic gold medal while not quite understanding his heritage, or even having conversations about those subjects with his parents.

Now, he understands his identity outside of the pool. His myriad experiences in life have taught him that.

“What happened happened,” Ervin said. “It’s all contributed to what I’ve done — the good things, the bad things, the difficult things, the highs, the lows. It all stacks into building me into who I am now.”

And part of that — just a piece, not anything given outsized importance — is a swimmer whose name will be written into swimming history. The oldest male swimmer to win gold.

“He was the special sauce to our group,” Marsh said. “He was the guy who came in and just added that extra context to what we’re doing. His context was, ‘Guys, this is just a piece of your life and it’s part of your process.’ When you’ve done everything from living on the streets of New York to contemplating suicide, you get that this is (just) swimming.”

It is just swimming, and nothing so simple will ever define a man as complex as Anthony Ervin. But for one night, for precisely 21.40 seconds, Ervin the swimmer was simply spectacular.