Opinion

From the Hoosier gene pool, these values rock

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Over the years, some major Olympic moments have been indelibly etched in our memories.

Kerri Strug sticking the landing for gymnastics gold at Atlanta in 1992.

Bruce Jenner (we can still call him that, right?) being handed an American flag and dramatically punctuating his decathlon gold with it in Montreal in 1976.

Those frustratingly multiple do-overs the Soviets were given in the 1972 basketball showdown with the U.S. in Munich.

And, of course, the "Miracle on Ice" that brought every American out of his big comfy chair to celebrate a thrilling hockey win over Russia in 1980.

Admittedly, however, my interest in the Olympics has waned in recent years. Too many gimmicky sports. Too many TV networks to navigate. Too much PED talk. Lack of a true star that has transcended sports in th intervening years other than Michael Phelps (and perhaps his bong).

That may all have changed this week -- at least for me.

And leave it to a Hoosier to finally help make the Olympics interesting to me again.

Lilly King. Evansville product and the latest Indiana University swim sensation. That's who's emerged as my new favorite.

And it's not just because she looks like one daughter of mine with her red hair and swims like the other with her broad shoulders.

Or even because she won the 100-meter breaststroke in Olympic record time. Or that she will return to campus in Bloomington this month as a reigning NCAA champion while just a sophomore at IU.

But it's because of how she reacted in victory to Russian foe Yulia Efimora (honestly thought they were calling her "Effing-moron" at one point), who had been reinstated despite a past of PEDs (performance enhancing drugs).

Lilly -- the swimmer, not the drug maker -- not only triumphed but celebrated with one socially acceptable finger raised on high, followed by a very Dikembe Mutombo-like "not-in-my-house" finger wag back at the Russian. All that, on top of a pre-race stare-down that evoked memories of "Rocky IV."

So cue your most intense chant. USA! USA! USA!

The world is now calling our Hoosier heroine things like the winner of the "Cuban Missile Crisis of Swimming" and the "Charles Barkley of the pool."

That's fine. That's pretty creative actually. But I prefer the Red Stare.

However, what Lilly King really is -- is just a honest-to-goodness, from-the-heart Hoosier. Maybe that's what the marketing people were thinking about when they laid that "Honest-to-goodness Indiana" slogan on us a couple years back.

From the heart? We don't make them any other way. Don't need to.

Contrast her innate reaction to that of the ho-hum, robotic and emotionless performance we've witnessed from the men's basketball team so far. Or the meh confusion over whether to celebrate or ceremoniously dismiss the retirement/banishment of Alex Rodriguez and his 696 home runs from baseball.

Perhaps it's because I have some small understanding of all the sacrifice and dedication swimmers must endure just in order to stay in shape, let alone to improve, having watched my daughters work at it to become as good as they did on the high school level. Can't even imagine what that entails to be the best in the world. Ever.

It makes it all certainly something to celebrate, and a victory we Hoosiers can cherish as some tiny part ours as those countless remaining hours of television coverage and silliness from local news crews on the scene in Rio (did we really need a feature on a man who makes sandcastles on the beach?) continue until closing ceremonies Aug. 21.

So what's in a name, we might ask? That's easy here.

King of the pool that Lilly is, she's the queen of Hoosier hearts.