Golden Tale of Olympic Swimmer Natalie Coughlin
Written: Jun 05 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Well-told, detailed story
Cons: Overdoes the theme a bit
The Bottom Line: Silver has written an excellent sports biography that is a fascinating read for athletes and non-athletes alike. No parent of an athlete should miss it.
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| Redlass's Full Review: Golden Girl: How Natalie Coughlin Fought Back, Cha... |
Michael Silver knows how to get inside a sport and paint a portrait of an athlete.
This isn’t too surprising to anyone who has been a faithful reader of his sports coverage and columns at Sports Illustrated. He’s one of those writers who knows how to find the heart of a sport and pump its energy into the fans.
It’s perhaps for this reason that several premier athletes of the sports that Silver covers have trusted him to write their stories. He’s written books for such athletes as Dennis Rodman, Kurt Warner, and Jerry Rice—all three of them very different sorts of men.
His latest book, released in May 2006, turns from professional sports into the world of the Olympics and college athletics. Golden Girl is the story of Natalie Coughlin, a swimmer par excellence who brought home five medals from the 2004 Olympics.
It’s a book with a long subtitle, a subtitle that broadcasts the theme that will show up in every chapter of the book: How Natalie Coughlin Fought Back, Challenged Conventional Wisdom, and Became America’s Olympic Champion. Silver sinks his teeth into the theme of Natalie doing things her own way and spins his tale around that theme.
Because he is telling the reader about Natalie’s unconventional training regime and her pursuit of the championship, he doesn’t tell his story in chronological order. He begins with the race of her first Olympic gold, starting at the moment when Natalie panics and her body begins to seize up on her. From there, he takes us backward, showing us all the frustrations, the hopes, the work, and the choices.
In order to fully tell Natalie’s tale, Silver spent years following Natalie and the women’s swim team at UC Berkeley. The biography isn’t merely the story from Natalie’s point of view. Silver brings his skills as a reporter to the biography and interviews all of the important people in Natalie’s career—even those whom she has a tense relationship with.
In addition to being Natalie’s tale, it is also the tale of her coach, Teri McKeever. McKeever would become the first female coach for the women’s Olympic swim team and she was a coach whose methods were at odds with much of the conventional wisdom amongst other swim coaches. She resisted overtraining and spent a lot of time making sure her swimmers were whole and healthy.
There are times when the story bogs down and becomes slightly repetitive. There are only so many different ways you can make the point that other coaches didn’t approve of McKeever and Coughlin and were condescending about their training methods before it becomes tedious.
Also, while Coach Ray Mitchell is criticized for harping on the eating habits and weight of his swimmers, Natalie seems willing to be amused by her teammate Haley Cope doing the same thing to the swimmers at college.
That aside, Golden Girl is a well-told story, even for people who wouldn’t consider themselves swimming fans. It’s a book that any young athlete or parent of a young athlete could get a lot from—because it is the story of making choices so that the sport remains fun and doesn’t sacrifice the body and soul of the athlete in exchange for a medal or two.
Silver’s style is very easy to read. He manages to get into the intricacies of swimming without ever losing the neophyte reader. Swimmers may find some of the explanations basics, but there is so much meat on each page, that they’ll find themselves inclined to forgive—especially since the book explains their sport so well to others.
Golden Girl by Michael Silver is an excellent sports biography that tells a fascinating story of an athlete and a sport.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Redlass
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Member: Bridgette
Location: Lansing, Michigan
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I have many loves: family, books, theater, writing, and the many communities I belong to.
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