RIO DE JANEIRO _ Katie Meili really has no business at these Olympics.
At least that's what most people would have said three years ago. At that point, Meili had never made a national or junior national U.S. swimming team. Her very good _ but not extraordinary _ collegiate career at Columbia was coming to a quiet end.
Meili is very smart. She has an Ivy League degree in psychology. You would figure that if she went to the Olympics in any capacity, it would be because she had figured out a way to make a business trip out of it.
And that's what she did.
But the business is swimming.
Meili will compete starting Sunday in Brazil in the preliminaries of the women's 100 breaststroke _ the final is Monday night if she makes it that far. She may also have a role on the U.S. 4x100 medley relay later in the competition.
Meili (rhymes with "Smiley") ranks as one of the best success stories ever for SwimMAC Carolina's Team Elite, because Meili was not quite the caliber of athlete that Team Elite usually allows into its program.
"I'm definitely not the most talented swimmer of that bunch," Meili said.
Said Cammile Adams, another of the six U.S. Olympians from Charlotte, N.C.-based SwimMAC Carolina and also Meili's roommate for the past 18 months: "It's been great to see Katie's confidence grow. When she first moved in, she was like, 'I don't think I even belong here.' She was constantly trying to prove herself."
David Marsh, Team Elite's coach, said Meili approached him once at a swim meet in Charlotte several years ago. "Katie came up and asked if she could try out for Team Elite," Marsh said. "She wasn't, at that point, at the level where we would normally take her. She hadn't been recruited by all the top schools. She was a good, but not a great, swimmer at Columbia. But something about her sparkle, her passion, made it very easy to accept her."
Still, the coach wasn't at all sure Meili would be making any Olympic teams.
"With a lot of the athletes, my first hope is they'll be good contributors to the group and good role models for the kids," Marsh said of his Team Elite squad. "If they happen to be on the Olympic trajectory, that's a bonus. ... She was definitely the first two of those, but was she the third?"
