Hodding Carter dreamed of being an Olympian as a kid. He
worshipped Mark Spitz, swam his heart out, and just missed
qualifying for the Olympic trials in swimming as a college
senior. Although he didn't qualify for the 1976, 1980,
1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, or 2004 Olympics, he never
stopped believing he could make it. And despite past
failures and the passage of time, Carter began his quest
once more at the age of forty-two.
Maybe he's crazy. But then again, maybe he's onto
something. He entered the Masters Championships. He swam
three to four miles each day, six days a week. He pumped
iron, trained with former Olympians, and consulted with
swimming gurus and medical researchers who taught him that
the body doesn't have to age. He swam with sharks
(inadvertently) in the Virgin Islands, suffered hypothermia
in a relay around Manhattan, and put on fifteen pounds of
muscle. Amazingly, he discovered that his heartbeat could
keep pace with the best of the younger swimmers'. And each
day he felt stronger, swam faster, and became more
convinced that he wasn't crazy.
This outrageous, courageous chronicle is much more than
Carter's race with time to make it to the Olympics. It's
the exhilarating story of a man who rebels against middle
age the only way he can—by chasing a dream. His article in
Outside magazine, on which this book is based, was the
winner of a Lowell Thomas award from the Society of
American Travel Writers Foundation.
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