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Olympics Blog

One and done: Emily Silver’s Olympics

By Helene Elliott
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BEIJING -- Swimmer Emily Silver’s Olympic experience may total 54.81 seconds, or the time it took the recent Cal graduate to swim the third leg of the women’s 400-meter relay Saturday at the National Aquatics Center.

It seems like a long way to travel just to swim two lengths of the pool and relinquish her place to a better swimmer in the next round.

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But for Silver, who broke two fingers on her right hand at the Olympic trials and underwent surgery barely a month ago, the journey was completely worth it.

And that’s not only because she teamed with Kara Lynn Joyce, Julia Smit and Lacey Nymeyer to swim the third-fastest qualifying time, 3 minutes, 37.53 seconds, and give the U.S. a berth in Sunday’s finals.

‘On our way here we saw the Olympic torch,’ she said. ‘We all took the bus over, the four of us, and it was a really special moment. Just to be a part of this is amazing.’

-- Helene Elliott

Olympics Blog
Helene Elliott

Helene Elliott was with the Los Angeles Times’ Sports department from 1989 to 2024, first as a staff writer and then, starting in 2006, as a columnist. She became the first female journalist to be honored with a plaque in the Hall of Fame of a major professional sport as the 2005 winner of the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Elmer Ferguson Award, awarded to writers “who have brought honor to journalism and to hockey.” A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, she has covered 18 Olympics.

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