Rouse Wins, but Losing Wouldn’t Have Been So Bad

Jeff Rouse used to be skeptical of the Olympic motto that says it’s not the winning but the taking part.

If you are the world-record holder in the 100-meter backstroke, you don’t simply feel the internal need to win, you also feel the external pressure. A silver medal is a bauble, nothing more.

Funny how Rouse has come around to thinking that it is the taking part that’s important. It’s an easier position to take when you’ve had your ambitions fulfilled and your demons doused. That’s the power of an Olympic gold medal, but it’s also the power of the silver.

Had he not lost to Canadian Mark Tewksbury at the Barcelona Olympics, Rouse would not have had the motivation to continue swimming. If he had not felt the crushing disappointment of failing, he might not have come to understand that failure set him on the path to success.

Success came to Rouse on Tuesday night at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center, when he won the Olympic gold medal in the 100 backstroke, the race he and others expected him to win in 1992. His winning time of 54.10 seconds is the fastest in the world this year.

The victory brought the 26-year-old Stanford graduate much-sought peace and, perhaps, relief from the memory of that bitter loss in Barcelona that caused him to agonize over why he was not able to achieve a goal that seemed within his grasp.

Rouse never fully appreciated the chasm that exists between first and second place until he finished second at the Olympic Games. He went into the competition as the clear favorite, having dominated the event for so long. Expectations rose precipitously when Rouse set the world record of 53.86 in the morning prelims.

He didn’t swim badly in that evening’s final, but Tewksbury performed remarkably and Rouse lost by .06. That slender thread of defeat charted the course of his life for nearly four years.

So focused was he on winning the gold medal that after the race he dangled his feet in the warmup pool and muttered, “If I am not the gold medalist, then what am I?”

When Rouse lost the same event at the World Championships in the 1994, the swimming world firmly affixed its label.

“Choker,” Rouse said. “I know I’ve been called it before.”

Once Rouse discovered that second place wouldn’t kill him, he found a way to help it make him stronger. He also learned that the difficult struggle to make himself a better person paid the dividend of making him a more powerful swimmer.

Rouse rededicated himself to swimming, but he also fleshed out his life so that swimming was not the sole focus. He graduated from Stanford and moved in with a family that had four young girls. They took to him like he took to water. He may count his proudest achievement as teaching the youngest child to swim.

“What I learned about myself is that I’m not just a swimmer,” he said. “I’m a pretty good guy. I’m probably a better person than a swimmer. It made me refocus and realize what’s important. I guess in the last four years, I’ve been maturing and growing up.

“I came to realize that it’s not what we do in the pool and what medal we win but the kind of person we are and the integrity we have. Basically, I put my life in perspective.”

He seems to have gained so much perspective that the gold medal means much to him, but not everything. He said he wouldn’t change the results from 1992, even if he could, because of the positive force it has brought into his life.

Rouse spoke to Tewksbury right after the race, when the Canadian, who is a broadcaster here, interviewed him on the pool deck.

“I thanked him for beating me,” Rouse said. “I wouldn’t be here without him beating me. I learned a lot about myself. That experience [of losing] made me what I am today.”