But for the swimmer in lane five, who advanced to Sunday night's semifinals and touched the wall first in a personal best time of 1 minute, 8.43 seconds, the 1996 Atlanta Games are a real, living memory. Gabrielle Rose, the swimmer in lane five, competed in those Olympics as an 18-year-old a whopping 28 years ago.
It seems mathematically impossible, but it's 100 percent true: At 46, Rose is seven years older than any of the 1,007 athletes at the Olympic Trials (and 33 years older than the youngest athlete in the tournament). As of Sunday, she was nearly 20 years older than the next-oldest athlete and nearly 30 years older than the youngest athlete in the same qualifying tournament.
“I feel so young and powerful and so blessed to have this experience,” said Rose, who was in the stands with her 9-year-old daughter, Annie. “I don't really identify with the term 'oldest.'”
Rose's unlikely, emotional battle for middle-aged glory came to a close in the semifinals on Sunday night. Despite setting another personal best in 1:08.32, she finished 10th, with the top eight advancing to Monday night's final. (World record holder Lily King led the heats in 1:05.57.) Rose made a circuitous exit from the pool to final applause.
Though Rose hinted that her career as an elite swimmer is over, even with legends like Katie Ledecky and King swimming in the same session, her Sunday morning starring role will be one she will always remember.
The crowd of 17,697 — likely a record for a qualifying session at a swim meet — took notice when the announcer noted Rose's age, making her the oldest swimmer in the meet. A low murmur reached a crescendo as Rose made her way to the final wall in first place. The cheers rose to a roar as she touched the wall at first, more than half a second ahead of the runner-up. Rose hung there for more than a few seconds, hiding tears welling up behind her goggles.
“I was just relieved,” she said when asked what she was thinking at the time. “I just wanted to swim the way I knew I could.”
As Rose walked across the pool deck to the athletes' tunnel, the crowd full of swim moms and dads her age continued to applaud, many of them standing in ecstasy. As she walked, Rose held her left hand to her chest, as if she was trying desperately to hide it inside her chest.
“I didn't realize it would be so loud and amazing,” she said.
By the end of the final three qualifying rounds, Rose had qualified for the semi-finals, ranking 11th out of 16. She never dreamed what would happen in the semi-finals that would end her journey. She had already accomplished what she came here to do.
“I don't have any expectations. I'm not going to make the team, but I just wanted to swim,” she said. More than that, her mission was to prove something to her peers. “I just want to show people that they can do more,” she said. “I want people, especially women, to know that they can achieve more later in life.”
Rose's swimming career has soared and plummeted, twisted and turned, and finally come full circle. The daughter of a Brazilian mother and an American father, Rose grew up in Memphis as a breaststroke prodigy, setting the US age-group record at age 12. But by her own account, she “lost” her sense of swimming somewhere along the way, eventually switching to freestyle and individual medley swimming.
She swam at Stanford University, representing Brazil in Atlanta in 1996, then the United States in Sydney in 2000, where her best result was seventh in the 200m individual medley. Her last attempt at elite swimming was at the 2004 U.S. Trials, where she fell just short of a third Olympic appearance. Most of the next two decades were spent in what she calls “real life,” raising her daughter, working as a club-level swimming coach in Southern California, and working to prevent drowning through a foundation her father founded.
She went on to compete as a masters swimmer, holding 14 national records from ages 35 to 39 and 45 to 49. Then a few years ago, she started to feel her breaststroke, the most temperamental of swimming strokes, coming back into shape. Her times continued to slip, and finally, in November, she cleared the Olympic qualifying standard. She was headed to Indianapolis.
So there she was on Sunday at an NFL stadium, struggling to maintain composure as she soaked up the energy of nearly 18,000 mostly strangers. She'll return to “real life” in a few days, back to being a mother, coach and advocate, but first, she took one more swim on Sunday night.
“This is like [being] “That little girl was disappointed and wondering what happened to her breaststroke,” she said. “I found it. It took me decades, but I found it.”
