Summer School

You won’t see Summer Sanders in Beijing this week. You may catch her at pool in Park City, Utah, swimming laps with her 2-year-old daughter, Skye, on her back. Or she might be climbing thousands of stairs in preparation for a half-marathon next month. But most likely, she’ll be glued to her TV screen inhaling as much Olympic coverage as she can absorb.

Sixteen summers have passed since Sanders racked up two golds, a silver, and a bronze medal in the pool at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, but Sanders’ ears still perk when she hears the Olympic anthem humming on the Today Show. Now 35 and the mother of Skye and a six-month-old son, Spider, Sanders still lives and breathes fitness, running marathons and half-marathons, creating a workout DVD series—Growing Bellies—for mothers-to-be, and, of course, swimming regularly.

In between all that, she’s took a few moments to reflect on her Olympic experience and offer a few words of advice for this year’s athletes as they approach the biggest moments of their lives.

What do you remember most about your Olympic experience? What advice would you give to a young, promising swimmer like Katie Hoff?

Katie Hoff learned so much from her first games, how nervous she got. That experience is so invaluable. The only advice I can give is the way I approached it: I tried to make it not as big as it was. I tried to approach it as just another swim meet, no big deal, that there weren’t millions of people watching, that I wasn’t representing an entire nation. I looked at it more as a fun thing as opposed to a lot of pressure, which I think helped me a lot.

It is so easy to get caught up in it because it’s so thrilling and so exciting. I just approached it as how exciting that moment was. I wasn’t scared of it; I was excited.

Everyone can look at a stressful moment in their life like public speaking or a big presentation, and there are two kinds of nervous: There’s oh my gosh, I’m not prepared or I’m so prepared for this kind of nervous; then there’s I’m 100 percent prepared for this, I’m stoked, I’m excited. And that’s the way I approached it. It’s the moment you dream about, so why not love it. I remember vividly thinking that right before my last race. I was thinking, ok, this is the last time I am going to be swimming in this pool at these Olympics. And not knowing what my career was going to hold I knew it could be the last time I ever swim in the Olympics. And it was.

You were on the team with Dara Torres. When you see what she’s doing, do you think ‘I could do that?’
I don’t think so. She’s extraordinary. Her events—it’s much more doable to be a sprinter. I’m enjoying being a mom. It doesn’t mean I couldn’t come back if I gave it everything I had, but I’m not there mentally. It takes a different mindset, which she has.

Do you still feel that competitive edge come over you when you watch the Olympics?
Oh yeah. It’s something you’re born with. My husband is ski racer, and he has it. When I hear that music every morning on the Today Show, it gives you the chills. It gets me going. But it doesn’t make me want to get out there doing it, but it does get me excited for it. And the fact that I’m not going to be over there this time makes me wish I was there, but I have a 6-month-old little boy, so I made the decision not to go.

After training so hard and so long, is there a post-partum period that an athlete should expect after the Olympics?
Oh yes. I wrote a paper on this it at Stanford. I always equated it to the ultimate year of Christmas when you’re 10. It’s the best Christmas ever. You’ve been waiting for it and the morning finally arrives and at 10 o’clock it’s over, and you’re thinking, what do I have to look forward to tomorrow? Take that and multiple it by 1,000, and that’s the feeling the day after the Olympics are over. It might be different now because people are competing Olympics after Olympics. But back in my day you knew that might be it, and you built up your whole life to that moment. So there is a feeling of how can anything compare to this?

I had a good situation because I went back to Stanford, which is the most humbling place I could have gone. My best friend said “you need to come back and live with us and be normal.” She knew before I did that that’s what I needed to do.

What’s is happening during a race that the viewer doesn’t see?
We’re actually thinking. The longer the race, the more you have time to decide things. How tired am I? Can I do this? There’s a period where you can get a little scared when you think, I’m in fourth and I’m supposed to be leading by now. So, those are emotions we’re going through all during the race, which people don’t see.

You have a race plan, you know your competitor. You know the way they swim, so you have an idea of what you should be doing, and if you’re not there, there can be a moment of slight freak out.

What did you do to fill the down time during your Olympics? Did you get the Barcelona experience?
Our down time was really after the competition. I feel very fortunate. I think that Olympics was the last of its kind, before the super-hyped Olympics. Back then, it was just the beginning of NBC really telling the whole story.

It was great being part of those Olympics. When I finished swimming I had a choice to travel around Barcelona or just enjoy the Olympics, and I went to as many events as I could. I knew I could only be here once, but I could always come back to Spain.

We didn’t have any air conditioning in our rooms, and it was really hot. But we did have this place that was air conditioned where you could lie down and listen to a CD. There was a bowling alley. But we weren’t supposed to be on our feet. And I was young, I was 19—we played cards. Real exciting.

That Olympics was the beginning of the Internet, so we could e-mail people. Now it’s all texting. Phelps was texting right before he went up on the awards podium…

How much do you think you could have improved your time wearing a Fastskin LZR Racer that the swimmers are wearing this year?
I haven’t put them on. Our suits were so back in the ancient days. I won gold in what was called a “paper suit.” There was hardly anything covered in that suit. At first I thought it didn’t make that much of a difference. But from what I hear from people it actually does make a difference. If I believed it would make me faster, then it probably would. But I think they are faster. Technology evolves: They went from nylon suits to Lycra suits to paper suits. There’s no reason to put an asterix by any records, it’s just the evolution of sports.

You’re a runner now? What other training are you doing to stay in shape?
I’m running a little half marathon here in Park City on August 23 that I’m so not ready for, but I’m still going to do it. I’ve run two New York Marathons—one in 1999 and one in 2001. The first one I did not train for, and the second one I did. In that first one I totally surprised myself and ran it in 3:35. When then I started training, but I was doing a lot of international travel toward the end, but I still did a 3:17. I was pretty happy. I love the New York Marathon. There’s nothing like it.

Training is half the battle. The training is harder than the actual marathon. You just need to get your body used to that point where you can say I can’t do it but know that you can. I should have done more sprinting when I trained.

I went to the pool and I had my daughter on my back and we swam some laps. I run up and down the stairs about 20,000 times. But right now I’m trying to eat lunch, and I’m standing up. I never sit down anymore. I think moms are pretty incredible when it comes to the amount of energy they use every single day. I learned that using the bodybugg. I’d vacuum and run around the house, and I’d burn more calories than when I worked.