By David Rieder.
For almost any swimmer, retirement comes with some reluctance and nostalgia. When one particular activity has been such a serious part of someone’s life for so long, it’s tough to leave it behind and experience such a massive lifestyle change. But sometimes, the sport has a way of telling someone that enough is enough, that it’s time.
When his swimmers are pondering retirement, Georgia coach Jack Bauerle tells them, “If you feel and are willing to do what you want to go faster and if you feel like you can, then you continue. If there’s one part of you that’s satiated, then you stop.”
For many, there’s not really a choice: The end of high school or the end of college means that life can no longer sustain a swimming career. For those with the opportunity at professional swimming, the inability to keep up with one’s main competitors or failure to qualify for a team or meet can be a sign of the end.
Increasingly scarce in sports are those who manage to go out on their own terms, when they are still close to the top of their game. Aaron Peirsol comes to mind as one such example—he retired after winning Pan Pacs gold in his hometown in 2010. Twenty-three-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps also got to ride into the sunset.
Nic Fink, who has swum for Bauerle the last seven years, has experienced both the failures and successes which often prompt retirement, and each time, he’s chosen to swim on.
Before the 2016 Olympic Trials, Fink had represented the U.S. in both breaststroke events at two straight World Championships. At Pan Pacs in 2014, he had been the silver medalist in the 200 breast. But at Trials, he fell all the way to seventh in both races.
He could have decided that the sport had swum him by and moved on. “It took him a while to get over Trials. It was tough,” Bauerle said. “He was devastated.”
But Fink came back, and one year later, the scene in Indianapolis was quite the opposite. In a minor upset, Fink finished second in a loaded 200 breast final, nine hundredths ahead of Olympic silver medalist Josh Prenot, to secure a spot on a third World Champs team. In Budapest, he finished fifth in the 200 breast.
After that high, that impressive turnaround, Fink again considered hanging up the suit, but only briefly.
“I did have a good year last year—it was more the year I wanted, but I did have the feeling that I did have more to give, more to give to myself and to the sport,” he said. “If I had the feeling of, ‘This is it—this is as far as I’m going to go,’ I would have been happy with that.”
But Fink figured he had more to give, and he wanted to see it through. His main goal: “Keep getting better and keep making teams.” Okay, fair enough. Consider that Fink’s best time in the 200 breast is 2:08.56. Understandably, he believes he can break into the 2:07-range, a feat only three other Americans have accomplished. But there’s another piece to what Fink still wants out of the sport.
“Just to keep having fun,” he said. “The second I stop having fun with it, it’s not worth all the effort and time. I do like the grind. I do like working out for a job, and it is fun. My main goal is to keep making major international trips and continue to improve because everyone else is improving, too.”
Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
Not to mention the perks. Fink recalled last summer’s trip to Europe, which included outdoor taper practices before Worlds in Croatia and then after the meet, a week of exploring Rome, “seeing a bunch of things that you probably would have never seen otherwise.”
If you follow swimming closely, you probably knew a bit about the 24-year-old Fink, his down year in 2016 and his bounce back in 2017. Perhaps you noticed Fink’s strong mid-season efforts this past weekend at the TYR Pro Swim Series in Indianapolis, when he finished second in the 100 breast (1:00.94) and third in the 200 breast (2:11.33).
You probably didn’t know that Fink was an electrical engineering major at Georgia and a post-grad scholar—or that his father, Peter, is Senior Vice President of Events for the NBA.
“We always like to ask him his opinions on certain things and figure out what may be going on on the inside, but I don’t think he tends to discuss that much stuff,” Nic Fink said. “It is fun to see some of the behind-the-scenes stuff. He plans the All-Star Game.”
But while Nic is an avid sports fan, he has no plans to follow his father into that industry. Instead, he plans on putting that well-earned degree to good use. Five years from now, he said, he has no intention of spending his Fridays grinding through threshold IM sets anymore.
“I don’t really see myself swimming past 2020 if I’m taking it year by year. I studied electrical engineering in college, so I’d like to do something like that. It’s a pretty general degree, maybe go to grad school and get something a little more specified,” Fink said.
“Some of the postgrads, they fear a desk job. They fear sitting down at the same desk all day and doing work. They’d rather be active and be exercising. I totally get that, but I’m not afraid of a real-world job. Maybe that will be a reality check when I get there.”
For now, Fink will keep staring at the black line for a little while longer, for exactly the right reasons.
Go Dawgs