By Devanshi Rathi
Natalie Coughlin was born to swim. Her home had a backyard pool and her parents introduced her to the sport when she was just eight months old, by enrolling her for training lessons at the YMCA. She took her first step in competitive swimming by joining a swim club team when she was six years old. Today, she holds the tied-American record for the greatest number of medals won by a female US swimmer at the Olympic Games with a staggering 12 medals, including six at a single Olympics! Her silverware also showcases sixty medals achieved at different international events spread across the Olympics, the World Championships, the Pan Pacific Games, and the Pan American Games.
Natalie had been trained in time management ever since she was a young girl. She had to balance the rigors of her academics as well as her sport. As she entered her teenage years, it was time for her to make “the big leap” in swimming. According to her, “That is when I realized that becoming an Olympian was a real possibility, and I began doing double practices (twice in a day).” Despite being the champion amongst all High Schools, recording the highest times for fourteen different events, which was a record never seen before, Natalie’s focus was set high-up in the sky. She always knew that she wanted to compete in the mecca of all meets - The Olympics.
Being an Olympian is one of the biggest accomplishments in an athlete’s life. For Natalie, her drive to perform well across all the four strokes and her intense competitiveness were what made her succeed at such a huge platform. Now, when the time came to choose colleges, as Natalie was concentrating on also gaining a strong academic education, she narrowed down her options to three Californian schools - Cal, UCLA, and Stanford, which were all in her home state. She mentions, “After visiting all the schools and meeting their respective swim teams, I realized that Cal was my home.” Go Bears!
Natalie arrived at the “Blue and Golden” Bear campus in 2000. When talking about her experience at the university, she speaks a lot about the women’s swim team coach Teri McKeever’s influence on her. She says, “Teri McKeever was always making us think ‘out of the box’ with our practice. She repeatedly said that we were training 24 hours a day whether we like it or not. The way we walk, our posture throughout the day, the nutritional choices that we make, our sleep… it all affects our training and performance.” Besides, this coaching methodology prepared Coughlin for a demanding job of being a student athlete at Cal.
Natalie says that her time as a student-athlete started out in an extremely challenging manner, but then she got used to the demands as time progressed. “I had a rude awakening my Freshman year! Academics always came easily to me in high school, and it wasn’t until I attended Berkeley that I really had to work for my grades. I remember crying after each of my 3 midterms in Psych 1 because it was so difficult. By my sophomore year, I figured out how to balance my studies and my athletics, but it took much more work than I was used to.” She recounts that her favorite class and professor were Abnormal Psychology and Mary Kelsey, respectively.
While she was attending Cal, Natalie competed in many prestigious tournaments worldwide. In 2002, she became the first woman to ever swim the 100 meter backstroke in under a minute. This is something unimaginable to the average female, but Natalie recounts, “I had been so close to that mark for years, and knew that I could do it. More than anything, I just took my training day by day and tried to maximize my opportunities in practice, while keeping my goals in mind.” On preparing for these competitions at Cal, Coughlin explains, “The World Championships and Pan Pacifics were held in July and August, respectively. As soon as the NCAAs were over in the spring, my focus shifted from short course yards racing to long course meters sprinting. We always had smaller training groups over the summer with a long course focus.”
The year 2004 marked the beginning of Natalie’s golden dream of competing for the United States at the Olympic Games. Talking about her emotions during this time, she says, “It’s difficult to describe that experience in a few sentences. I began dreaming of becoming an Olympian when I was six years old. When I was actually at my first Olympics, it was difficult to be present in the moment. When you dream of something like that for 15 years, it can be very overwhelming when you’re actually there.” Nevertheless, Natalie returned from Athens with five medals including two golds. Following this phenomenal start, she took a 3 month break from her regular training regime that always focused on long-course swimming, only to return as a post-graduate swimmer, leaving behind her collegiate career. Natalie graduated from Cal with a degree in Psychology in 2005.
As the years between the next Olympics in Beijing flew past, Natalie saw her greatness in the sport reach the peak. In the 2008 Olympics, she became the first U.S. female athlete in the modern history to win six medals in a single Games. She mentions, “I never thought I would actually compete in all six events. I added the 200 Individual Medley (IM) (where a swimmer has to do all the four strokes in a single race) to my Olympic Trials program at the last minute and didn’t have much experience in that event. After I qualified for that event along with the 100 back and 100 free (and the relays), I strongly considered dropping one, but the Head Olympic Coach Mark Schubert and Teri McKeever urged me not to. I’m grateful that they pushed me to race in all six events.”
After these 2008 Olympics, Natalie continued striving in the sport. However, in 2012, she faced a set-back when she went to the London Games. She talks about this experience as a time when she knew that she wasn’t swimming to the best of her ability. Although she did manage to win a bronze medal in a relay, which was her twelfth one, she mentioned that she could have done much better.
The so-called disappointment of the 2012 Olympics made Natalie shift gears. “I actually didn’t take much of a break after London. Because I didn’t swim that well that year, I returned to training pretty soon afterward but switched coaches and my training focus. I was really fortunate to have the opportunity to train with Dave Durden (the Cal Men’s Coach), while having Teri’s blessing to do so. I needed a change, and training with Dave was exactly what I needed.”
This alternation provided her with the new direction to continue aspiring for more medals in the Rio Games in 2016, which, unfortunately, didn’t happen for her. However, Natalie’s career as a swimmer stays as one of the most inspirational journeys witnessed in female sporting history in the recent past.
Natalie mentioned how important it is for her to keep up with her nutrition along with her physical training, which has made it possible for her to continue swimming for so long. Her passion for food and cooking is quite evident as she writes in her bio on Instagram that she is “an urban farmer and co-founder of Gaderian vines.” She explains, “I have a huge edible garden in my backyard along with hens that I raise for eggs. I also started Gaderian Wines in 2017 with my winemaker/business partner. We are a boutique winery in St. Helena that produces Napa Valley Chenin Blanc, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Rosé of Pinot Noir, Petit Verdot and Cabernet Sauvignon.” Besides, her favored book to read is “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” and she loves to relax by gardening and cooking. In fact, she recounts that she always enjoyed the Brewed Awakenings café on the Northside while at Cal.
The Top Dog and Gather restaurant fan also says, “I volunteered for the Edible Schoolyard in 2012 as part of their ‘Wednesday Weeders’ crew. I absolutely loved volunteering there because Alice Waters was a hero of mine, and I believed in her mission. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the best use of my time when I wasn’t training. I should have been resting when I wasn’t training instead of doing intense garden work. I began cooking my sophomore year in college and taught myself through watching Food Network and reading cookbooks and magazines. Gardening was the next step. I began with a small container garden on my fire escape and gradually added more and more plants.”
With her diverse interests, Natalie has already many hats to shuffle as she turns from being that fire spirited Olympian to a mother and a businesswoman with her own passion projects like her vineyard and other activities. On multi-tasking, she explains, “It’s difficult but my life has always been hectic, and I’ve always had to prioritize managing my time.”
Natalie also doesn’t shy away from talking about gender equity in sports, though she does mention that she was lucky as a female swimmer. She says, “I was fortunate enough to be in a sport that is very equal. Prize money was always the same for men and women. Women had just as many opportunities as the men, if not more (due to Title IX).”
Now, Coughlin proves to the world that she is a one-of-a-kind history-maker. She advises everyone to be open and flexible to new possibilities. She never thought that she would own her own winery, but here she was because an opportunity presented itself, and she took a leap of faith.
“It takes a lot of hard work and scrappiness, but that’s something that I learned during my time at Cal.” Well, what more can one say - Natalie Coughlin, a Golden Bear for life!
