Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Another swimmer autobiography

Just returned from vacation...I finished one swimming book, and am midway through another. The book I finished, Penny Heyns: An Autobiography
([South Africa] : PHBH Publications, 2004), is not held by many libraries in the U.S., so it's a little tricky to obtain. And it's not necessarily worth it. Penny Heyns, a South African breastroker, won 2 gold medals at the 1996 Olympics. She's a white woman who won the first medals for South Africa after its 30-year ban from the Olympics. But except for a chapter on her acquaintance with Nelson Mandela, there's not a lot to indicate that Heyns is from South Africa. Most of her training on the world-class level took place in Nebraska and Calgary. And there's very little about her growing up in South Africa. There is a bit about the sports bureaucracy there, but the way she describes it, it sounds like the typical bureaucracy meddling in athletes lives.

There's some decent stuff about what it's like to actually compete at the Olympics, and dealing with the hoopla right after winning. And if you want to know what it's like to undergo drug testing, Heyns writes a lot about that.

The thing that really sets this book apart from others I've read is Heyns' discussions of/references to her Christian faith. Frankly, I don't like it when Christian athletes flout their religion, especially if they act like God wanted them to win. But Heyns didn't come off quite that way. It was interesting to read how she took both her wins and her losses as having a "higher" purpose. She explains how she views her swimming as using what she sees as a gift from God (and she's not necessarily talking about proselytizing). But some of the faith talk did get to me.

It was nice to read about an athlete who talks about what it's like to be an introvert.

So, not one of my favorite sports books, but not without merit, either.

5/15/07
For other swimming biographies, see entries for June 13 2006, June 29, 2006, and October 10, 2006.

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