Utah diver has golden courage

ATHENS, Greece — It was the stuff Olympic nightmares are full of: He was never out of last place; he hit the board on one dive; he scored a zero on another; he finished 291 points behind the leader.

When it was all finally over, when Utahn Justin Wilcock could pull a warm-up shirt over his aching back and leave his train wreck of an Olympics behind, the one thing he was happy about was that he did it.

"I left no unanswered questions," he said. "I'm glad I didn't pull out."

It was the same sentiment his mother, Kathy, had offered a few minutes earlier, sitting in the stands of the Olympic Aquatic Center with her husband, Scott, holding back tears: "At least he's finishing the race."

Olympic history is full of courageous performances in the face of injury. Stories like Shun Fujimoto, the Japanese gymnast who stuck a landing on a broken leg in 1976; or Kerri Strug, the American gymnast who landed a vault on a sprained ankle in 1996; or Greg Lougainis, the greatest diver of all time, who overcame a badly cut head in 1988. Those performances are memorable because a gold medal was on the line.

Wilcock's courage had a different motive: He simply did not want to quit. For 13 years, ever since he was 12 years old and his neighbor in Smithfield, Dwight Einzinger, invited him to try diving on his backyard trampoline — miles from any bodies of water — he'd trained and sacrificed to dive in the Olympics. He put off graduating from college two years ago so he could train full time with noted coach Ken Armstrong in Texas, his eye — both his eyes — fixated on Athens.

Through the U.S. Trials in June, when Wilcock qualified for the Olympics by placing second behind Troy Dumais, it all went like clockwork. But the day after his ticket to Athens was punched, Wilcock hit the weight room, and it was there — miles from any bodies of water — that he hurt his back.

The doctors said he suffered a stress fracture on the fifth lumbar. Bad enough if you're a bookkeeper; disaster if you're a diver. The only thing he could do was not do anything. He missed the national diving championships in July. For a month straight, he stayed away from diving boards altogether.

When he got to Athens almost a month ago with the U.S. diving team and things didn't feel much better, he had three separate epidural injections of cortisone. Feeling marginal improvement, he worked out sparingly but still approached the board as if it were a wasp's nest.