RIO DE JANEIRO _ Anthony Ervin won his first Olympic gold medal in 2000, when he was 19.
Then came a 16-year gap.
Then Ervin won his second career gold medal Sunday as part of a U.S. relay team. He swims again starting on Thursday in his specialty _ the 50-meter freestyle, a 22-second, splash-and-dash sprint that ranks as the shortest race in swimming.
If Ervin wins that race _ he won't be favored, but will have a chance if he gets off to a good start like he only does occasionally _ at age 35 he will become the oldest Olympic swimmer to ever win an individual event.
That's the short version of Ervin's life story in Olympic terms, but it leaves out the most interesting parts. What happened to Ervin in those 16 years between his first gold medal and his second is a fascinating story of self-destruction and redemption.
Ervin's first gold medal in 2000 caused him more angst than pleasure. He ended up auctioning it off for $17,101, then giving the proceeds to a tsunami relief fund. He retired from swimming at age 22.
As he chronicles in his 2016 autobiography "Chasing Water," Ervin then started experimenting with all kinds of hallucinogenic drugs. He joined a couple of different bands and tried to make it as a rock guitarist. He got deeply depressed and once tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of the medicine he uses to control his Tourette's Syndrome. He once drove a motorcycle at 177 mph and given that was not surprisingly also involved in a near-death wreck on a motorcycle another time.
"Maybe you can say he's lucky to be alive," David Marsh, Ervin's coach at Charlotte, N.C.-based SwimMAC Carolina, said of Ervin. "And he's making the best of that. He's now in this window of time where he's just in his best place."
As Ervin told me when he compared the Olympic team he made at age 19 to this one: "When I was 19, it all seemed very haphazard and chaotic and very lucky. I was more constructed than doing the constructing. This time, I feel like I am in the driver's seat."
