Anthony Ervin moved to Charlotte, N.C., three months ago to try to add to one of the strangest and most successful comebacks in swimming history. And at age 35, he has become an Olympian once again � the oldest swimmer on the American team.
But those words aren't nearly enough to describe Ervin. Let's try a few more: His father is black, his mother is Jewish. He has Tourette's Syndrome. During his darkest and most self-destructive times, he retired at age 22, experimented with all sorts of mind-altering drugs, got addicted to cigarettes, tried to make it as a rock guitarist, became deeply depressed, harbored suicidal thoughts and drove a motorcycle 177 mph. He is so heavily inked on his arms that his tattoos appear to have their own tattoos.
Ervin also reads widely and deeply. He won an Olympic gold medal in 2000. He later auctioned it off for $17,101, giving the proceeds to a tsunami relief fund.
"I feel like my own success is a personal vanity," Ervin told me in a recent interview. "I know it's illusory. It doesn't have much meaning."
And yet Ervin has relearned how to love the water and _ 16 years after his first Olympic appearance at age 19 _ has again turned himself into one of the fastest swimmers in the world. He slices through water like a "barracuda" in the pool, as SwimMAC Team Elite coach David Marsh said. After skipping every Olympics in his 20s _ the decade in which most swimmers peak _ Ervin has somehow become a three-time Olympian.
Once viewed as a rebellious novelty in the swim world who threw away his talent in pursuit of Dionysian pleasures, Ervin is now admired for his late-in-the-game comeback. At training camp recently, his 46 U.S. Olympic swimming teammates elected him as one of the squad's six captains. Ervin had to prep to give a speech after that to the U.S. team, so he started thumbing through Shakespeare's "Henry V" for inspiration.
Marsh first got to know Ervin at the 2000 Olympics, when Marsh was a U.S. assistant coach and Ervin a teenaged phenom. Marsh never coached him day-to-day, though, until Ervin came to Charlotte in early 2016. Ervin wanted to give Marsh the last coaching say in getting him ready for the 2016 Olympic Trials.
"David has the magic touch, and we've all seen it many times," Ervin said.
The decision to fly cross-country to make a temporary home in Charlotte wasn't as impulsive as many of Ervin's decisions in his 20s. He had been working out occasionally with SwimMAC for years during vacation. And his parents retired to Fort Mill a dozen years ago, although most of Ervin's own roots are in California. It was there that he grew up, went to college and first started morphing into one of swimming's anti-heroes.
Ervin believes he just completed his best Olympic Trials ever, qualifying both in the 4x100 freestyle relay and individually in the 50-meter freestyle. This time, he said, will feel a lot different than it did when he was 19 and tied for a gold medal in the 50 free.
"When I was 19," he said, "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."
