« Is Chewing Gum the Next “Performance Enhancing Drug”? | Main | Unconventional Ways to Become A Faster Runner »
Olympic Swimmer Ricky Berens Shows The World His Assets
By Christina | July 29, 2009
This past Sunday at the World Championships in Rome, former U.S. Olympic swimmer Ricky Berens swam in the qualifying heat for the 4×100 freestyle relay with his butt completely exposed for all the world to see. Right before his event was to begin, he did a last minute stretch and ripped the entire back of his bathing suit open. Maybe he intended to make skinny dipping an Olympic event.
Aside from being mortified, Ricky swam the race nonetheless and helped his relay team qualify for finals. At finals, they won the gold medal. Talk about taking one for the team! One day Ricky will look back at all the pictures of his bare butt all over the internet and in papers all over the world and laugh.
Even though this is a funny story in a competitive sport that is not known for its humor, we can all learn a thing or two from Ricky Berens when it comes to our own workouts and athletic performances.
Ricky was interviewed and stated that for a moment he was totally “freaked out.” Who wouldn’t be? The wonderful lesson with this story is that Ricky let himself have a moment of panic, but then let it go. He did not let it impede his performance or affect his mental discipline. He, for sure, did not use this embarrassing situation as an excuse to not race and let his team down.
We are all quick to quit exercise for the lamest of excuses. The truth is that circumstances beyond your control will often arise as stumbling blocks to your exercise program. If you are running a marathon, for example, you will not be able to predict all the things that can go wrong or different than you intended. You have to go with the flow and be present in the moment rather than caught up in the what if’s and why me’s. I saw someone the other day walking to the car from the gym looking as if she did not work out. That is because she didn’t. There was a different instructor for a class she was taking, so instead of trying someone new or doing another workout that day, she opted to just go home and forego exercise all together. Something tells me Ricky Berens wouldn’t have gone home.
Ricky Berens didn’t train his whole life to be remembered as the swimmer who swam with his butt showing at the World Championships. He trained his whole life to become a champion. He is one. Champions don’t quit when things don’t go their way. Champions don’t get caught up in negativity that will hamper their performance. Most importantly, champions will endure anything to win even if that means being massively embarrassed.
Topics: Aqua Fitness, General, Marathon Training |
April 19th, 2010 at 6:54 pm
This is a great article, Christina.
Strangely enough I had a similar incident during my high school football days. I was a wide reciever who caught a pass and the corner who was covering me attempted to tackle me. I was able to break the tackle but he managed to pull the back of my pants down (only the back luckily), exposing my entire butt. I had a clear field in front of me, and knew if I ran full speed I would get in the endzone. If I tried to pull my pants up I surely would have been caught or maybe even had the ball stripped.
My team really, really needed a touchdown at that point. I just wasn’t ready to let my team down, so without really thinking I ran the entire 30+ yards with my butt hanging out. We actually ended up winning that game after a field goal on the next possesion.
Now, keep in mind my family, friends, pretty much everyone I knew was at this game. The fact that they all saw me and my butt run for what felt like an hour was very, very humiliating. (and by the way, as I later saw in a video, my butt was jiggling and bobbling all over the place. Im not fat, but have you ever seen someone’s bare butt when theyre running? It definitely bounces like crazy, making it seem bigger than it is, but I digress).
After it happened I couldnt believe I had just mooned everyone I know. How would I face people? It turned out my team loved it and strangely people seemed to really respect me for it. Yeah, I was teased for a while (there are a lot of butt puns out there), there were mutiple pictures, videos, I had to deal with comments like my mom saying my “rear looked unhealthily white”, etc etc…but in the end it was worth it. I put my team before myself and didn’t let my butt get in the way of winning.
Now this was all before the days of youtube and flickr, but I recently was informed that someone who was at the game that day uploaded the video to youtube, and someone else posted in on some other video site (I refuse to post a link, but if you google it I bet youd find it…please dont, though
).
So now, almost ten years later, my bare bottom has gone viral. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t still a little embarrassed, but even I can watch the video now and admit it’s pretty damn funny.
And, no, I still dont regret it…sure, the world may have seen my butt, but they’ve also seen my heart, which matters a lot more to me!