Thompson Closes In on a Dream Finish

From the top of the towering west stands at Long Beach’s temporary aquatic complex, 72 steps high, you can see the earth swim.

Brown sand becomes blue waves becomes endless horizon, all of it rocking in rhythm to an insistent wind.

It was up here that swimming coach John Collins climbed early Thursday evening before the women’s 100-meter butterfly final at the Olympic trials.

He walked to the corner of the stands closest to the ocean. He yanked a gray knit cap from the back pocket of his jeans. He pulled it over his unruly hair.

He began to pray.

Standing nearby, a friend’s eyes widened.

“I thought to myself, ‘That’s the kind of hat Jenny’s mom used to make!’ ” said Pete Malone, a fellow coach. “That’s the kind of hat Jenny’s mom used to wear when she was going through chemotherapy.”

Jenny is Jenny Thompson, this country’s most decorated, and occasionally derided, female Olympian.

Earlier this year, she lost her mother.

Early Thursday evening, she took another stroke toward finding her way.

With Collins pleading above and Thompson dreaming below, the 31-year-old woman almost certainly qualified for the Athens Games with a second-place finish in the 100-meter butterfly.

Her fourth Olympics.

Her first Olympics.

An Olympics without the worry that, of her 10 medals, she has yet to win an individual gold.

An Olympics without the stress that once made her aloof and snippy.

An Olympics wrapped in the warm embrace of that gray knit hat.

“Winning changes with maturity,” Thompson said afterward with a weary smile. “I’m using this Olympics to relish my love for the sport.”

Constantly reminding her of that love was her mother, Margrid, who alone raised Thompson and three siblings in small-town New England.

While fighting esophageal cancer, Margrid used to sit by the pool and knit caps. In her final months, she knit one for Collins, the coach who helped bring Thompson out of retirement after the Sydney Games in 2000.

Margrid died in February, before she had a chance to give Collins the cap. Only recently did Thompson wrap it up and hand it to her coach.

“A gift from beyond the grave,” said Collins.

When Thompson saw it hanging out of his back pocket before Thursday’s final, her first major event without her mother in the stands, she knew.

“I said, ‘Oh, you going to wear your lucky cap today?’ ” she recalled.

Not only did he wear it, he climbed to the highest point of the aquatic complex to wear it.

“Kind of a good place be, huh?” he said.

Once there, alone in the corner, he prayed, and cheered, and prayed some more.

“I could see him, he was doing anything he could to help her get her dream,” said Malone, standing nearby.

It used to be a dream of fame and fortune, but fate never helped.

Thompson won eight Olympic gold medals, but all of them in relays. Her two individual medals were second and third.

Before the 2000 Olympics, she made more news with a bare-chested magazine photo than with her butterfly.

After the Olympics, she retired amid reports that she had been distracted by a feud with teammate Dara Torres.

But then, two years later, with her mother ill and events of 9/11 cemented in her mind -- she lives near the World Trade Center while attending medical school -- she returned to the sport.

“I wanted to do this for the joy of it,” she said. “For one more Olympics. My last Olympics.”

Soon that joy was shared by her teammates, as she became the big sister she never was, the leader some thought she would never be.

It was weird. It’s still weird.

She was entered in the finals against one competitor, 16-year-old Dana Vollmer, who wasn’t even born when Thompson won her first international medal.

But then Thompson stepped on to the pool deck, looked around, and realized, even in a Speedo, you can age gracefully.

The sort of swim fans who used to look at her with disappointment? Cheering loudly for her with every kick.

“I was surrounded by energy from all sides,” she said, her voice still filled with bits of wonder. “I really felt the love.”

The sort of pressure she used to feel? Sunk like the heavy burden that it was.

“Things I used to take for granted, I’m enjoying now,” she said. “I kept reminding myself, relax, relax....For me, it’s all about the process.”

So when she lost a first-lap lead and finished second to Rachel Komisarz?

“I knew she had passed me,” said Thompson. “I just hoped she was the only one.”

She was, and Collins rejoiced, and a former coach wept, and Thompson remembered a dream.

“I know this sounds corny, but last night, I had a dream, and my mother was in it,” Thompson said. “She was beautiful. She was by the ocean. She was happy. It really made me feel good to today to know she was with me.”

And now this unlikely, unshakeable trio will be traveling to Athens; a reborn star, her spiritual coach, and a gray knit cap.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.