| A
golden message
Olympic champion aids fight against
leukemia at Wheaton swim clinic
By Joshua
Welge
Daily Herald Staff
Writer
Posted Sunday, January 15,
2006
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| Brendan Hansen
had a simple question for the 120 young swimmers in front of
him:
“How many of you have never lost a race?”
No one raised their hand. That was his
point.
“No swimmer is always going to swim their best
race. It’s how you react that makes you a better swimmer,” he
said.
Hansen, a gold medalist at the 2004 Olympic
Games in Athens and world record holder in the 100- and 200-meter
breaststroke, was at Wheaton College Saturday for a clinic hosted by
the Wheaton Swim Club.
Proceeds from the clinic went toward the
Leukemia Research Foundation.
He told of the heartbreak he experienced before
realizing his Olympic dreams.
Hansen never lost a race in high school in
Pennsylvania. But at the Olympic Trials for the 2000 Olympics in
Sydney, he missed advancing by a mere .01 of a second.
He took that devastation to the University of
Texas, where he never lost a collegiate race. Four years later,
Hansen set the world record in the breaststroke at the Olympic
Trials, won a gold medal in the 400 medley relay, silver in the 100
breaststroke and bronze in the 200.
“In swimming, you will always get out of it what
you put into it,” Hansen said. “You need to figure out what you’re
doing wrong and use it to motivate you to swim faster.”
Hansen also got in the pool Saturday to work on
the technical aspects of swimming, from streamline to pullouts to
starts on every stroke.
His message was equally instructive.
“He’s so positive,” said Katie Johnson of Glen
Ellyn. “He makes every negative into a positive.”
Added Wheaton Swim Club teammate Lauren Zafir:
“He has a really good attitude, which is especially good because
there are so many younger kids here. He is so positive and so humble
about his accomplishments.”
Hansen has served as a spokesman for the
Leukemia Research Foundation for a little over a year. After
returning from the 2004 Olympics, he visited cancer patients in an
Austin, Texas, hospital with other athletes, including cyclist and
cancer survivor Lance Armstrong.
Shortly after that, when speaking at a dinner in
Pennsylvania, he asked that they forward the check for his
appearance to his “favorite charity,” the Leukemia Research
Foundation.
“It really touched me, really hurt me how these
kids were living their lives and I wanted to help,” Hansen
said.
Leukemia is the leading cause of disease-related
death in children under the age of 15; more than 178,000 Americans
are living with Leukemia.
Leukemia Research Foundation Executive Director
Kevin Radelet said Hansen’s support is an enormous benefit to the
organization, which is based in Glenview.
“Brendan is a one-of-a-kind person and has a
tremendous impact on a number of people,” Radelet said. “With his
visibility in swimming and the Olympics, he can touch people in the
states and worldwide.”
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