Amanda Beard by

Colony Red Hots

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-01-31 22:17:29 UTC

Amanda was introduced to the pool before she was 2 years old when she went to her older sister's swim meets over the summer. She had fun playing in the pool and being an unofficial part of the team until the summer of 1986 when Amanda turned 5 and was old enough to officially join the swim team. She was finally old enough to swim with her older sisters, Leah and Taryn, and the team the Colony Red Hots. She competed in her first swimming race ever and won her event which got her more interested in swimming. "My sisters, in their Red Hot suits, were making whooping sounds while my mom clapped happily. But my dad was the most excited, pumping his fist into the air. I felt as if I had won the Olympics. I was hooked" (13).

Divorce

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-06 19:20:33 UTC

In 1988 after a business trip with her father in Orlando, Amanda came home to her house and found out that her mom packed up and moved out. She still saw her mom and dad, but they were no longer living together. Her family provided no explanation as to why they divorced and "there were no big talks, no TV-style family sit-downs where they told me it wasn't my fault and that they still loved me" (16). Later her dad offered to let her design the living room because she was into interior design and as a distraction.

Irvine Novaquatics

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-06 19:25:15 UTC

Amanda was undefeated in the Red Hots, but she wanted to be challenged more and decided to join a club swim team. It was a year around club with the goal to be recruited to top colleges or make the Olympics. She trained 9 times a week which consisted of 4-5 hours of swimming a day surrounding school. She immediately realized how tough the program was when her coach screamed at a kid for being 2 minutes late. She also realized that while she was used to being the best, she was the worst on the team after the switch. Instead of letting it discourage her she worked harder to catch up with the other kids.

The Olympics

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-06 22:06:59 UTC

Amanda competed in the 1996 Summer Games with the USA swim team at 14 years old. Because there were almost no other kids at the Olympics, she spent most of her time doing all the activities the Olympic Committee offered around the hotel and village. Her medley relay with Beth Botsford, Angel Martino, and Amy Van Dyken won gold at the Olympics. When it was time for Amanda's individual events, she won silver with a time of 1:08.09 in the 100 meter breaststroke and won silver after racing Penny Heyns in the 200 meter breaststroke. This launched her future in swimming as thousands of people watched her compete.

Qualifying for the Olympics

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-07 17:41:39 UTC

Amanda's breaststroke started out as her worst event and wasn't even considered a legal stroke. She worked hard after many practices with her coach until she swam in August 1994 with a time of 1:15 and qualified, swam, and Summer Sanders to get to the Pan Pacific Championships in Atlanta, Georgia. She then won bronze medals in both the 100 and 200 meter breaststroke and silver in USA's women's medley relay to qualify for the Olympics. Afterwards she switched coaches to a coach named Dave who helped her qualify for the Olympics by winning the 100 and 200 meter breaststroke events and breaking a pool record in Indianapolis.

Struggle

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-07 17:49:53 UTC

Quickly after the Olympics Amanda finally hit puberty going from "a height of five two and weight of 95 pounds to five eight and 125 pounds" (65). This was devastating for her because she was unable to cut through the water the way she used to. She first competed in a swim meet at Long Beach 6 months after the Olympics where she came in 4th. She gained 4-5 seconds to her 100 meter breaststroke still qualifying for nationals but not for the international travel team. In July 1997. she competed in the Janet Evans Invitational at University of Southern California coming in 7th in the 200 meter breaststroke and 8th in the 100 meter breaststroke. In a year she went from being ranked 2nd in the world to 23rd in the 100 meter breaststroke and 26th in the 200 meter breaststroke.

Stopping & Starting Swim

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-07 18:08:53 UTC

In 1997 after the New Years Amanda decided to quit swimming. Both her parents were very supportive about her decision as well as her coach. Originally she thought she would have fun with all the free time however she became bored quickly as all she did was watch TV with her best friend, Yvette. After a month and a half she decided to go back to swimming with her coach, Dave. She competed in events she didn't do before like the 100 meter freestyle. Quickly after returning to swim, she realized "in the back of my mind, I wanted to get back to the Olympics. I wasn't satisfied with what I had done as a fourteen-year-old or the idea that that one time was my only shot" (78).

College Swim

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-07 18:17:35 UTC

After high school Amanda attended the University of Arizona and competed on their swim team. She received a full scholarship due to her Olympic record as a 14 year old and was still one of the best high school breaststrokers. The team was not like she was used to as the coach, Frank Busch, trained the boys and girls teams together. Along with this, practices contained double the yardage she was used to swimming, so it took a couple months to adjust to the new workouts. Through these practices she met Ryk Neethling who also competed in the Olympics and was a known swimmer. She later went on a date with him, and he became her boyfriend.

College Struggles

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-07 18:18:44 UTC

Despite having Ryk dating her, Amanda became more and more self conscious about her weight and body. This lead to a deep self hatred, and she was unable to resist food especially junk. After a month of college, she purged for the first time and continued doing so throughout the day for weeks at a time. It eventually got so bad that she was throwing up blood. During Christmas break, Amanda brought Ryk home to her house leading him to break up with her after believing they weren't alike. They got back together, but it became a very stressful and destroying relationship leading to more drinking and purging. Her self confidence dropped as "my relationship had taken validated every negative thought I had ever had about myself. Now I was convinced of my ugliness. I saw the way that he looked at other girls, especially when we went out and got drunk" (96).

Olympic Trials

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-07 18:30:08 UTC

Amanda prepared all summer of 2000 with her coach to compete in the Pacific 10 Conference again. She won her first Pac- 10 title in the 200 meter breaststroke with a 2:10.41 and got within 1 second of the record. It was the college's first Pac- 10 Conference Championship win, and they beat Stanford breaking their 13 year record. She then wanted to go for the Olympics, so her dad bought her a house in Tuscon that she shared with 2 other teammates. Sadly she came in 8th at the Olympic trials in Indianapolis, but 2nd in the 200 breaststroke qualifying her for the 2000 Olympic team.

2000 Olympics

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-07 22:31:50 UTC

Unlike the last time at the Olympics, Amanda felt nervous this time competing as she was in the last line because she barely made it into the finals. She ended up coming in 3rd place after Agnes Kovacs from Hungary and her teammate Kristy Kowal. However her boyfriend, Ryk, did not end up medaling and came in 5th for the 1500 meter freestyle. To blow off steam Amanda and Ryk went to a midnight party, and Amanda ended up taking ecstasy given to her by Ryk. After the Olympics, she flew with Ryk to South Africa, his homeland.

Ryk

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-07 22:37:00 UTC

After going to South Africa, Amanda met Ryk's family where he spoke Afrikaans. However the trip was tense because Ryk often excluded her from conversations with his family and friends. They traveled throughout the trip from places in Durban to Johannesburg to Cape Town and went to many nightclubs. It was there that Amanda tried cocaine, coke, and other drugs. Towards the end of the trip Ryk claimed he was going to propose if she hadn't ruined things, but Amanda knew "we had so many issues and only got along when I was on drugs. I thought his proposing was seriously crazy" (124). Amanda returned with Ryk to Tucson and lived with him and her 2 other male teammates. Having Ryk there added to the stress because he was messy, came home angry, went to strip clubs, and avoided her. These fights with Ryk caused Amanda to start cutting as a way to deal with the stress.

Professional Swim

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-08 16:15:25 UTC

Amanda debated quitting college swimming and giving up her scholarship to swim professionally by spring in 2001. She got started and found an agent, Evan Morgenstein, who landed her with a contract with Speedo for 4 years. Soon after she found herself with a photo shoot in Phoenix where she earned her first paycheck. Later on she landed an endorsement deal with the company, Red Bull. The tension with Ryk however did not ease up especially as she made more money. He became jealous and lashed out even ditching her in Vegas for not buying drugs. Eventually all the stress mounted up resulting in Amanda breaking up with him and letting him leave for good.

2004 Olympics

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-08 16:57:45 UTC

Amanda matched the world record time in the 200 meter breaststroke at the 2003 FINA World Championship in Barcelona with a time of 2:22.99 along with winning the 100 meter breaststroke. Later on at the U.S. Olympic trials she continued on to break the world record in the 200 meter breaststroke. At the Olympics she "won silver in the 200 meter individual medley and 400 meter medley relay, and my first individual gold medal in the 200 meter breaststroke...with that gold medal around my neck, I felt like a winner for the first time" (147).

Modeling

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-08 18:07:26 UTC

After the 2004 Olympics, Amanda booked many photo shoots with different magazines. One of them was the 2004 August issue for Maxim where they featured Anna Kournikova on the front. Then she booked a shoot to go against other professional sports people for the magazine, FHM. However these photo shoots brought her confidence further down, and people she used to know started making comments and tried to use her for publicity. She also got dropped from one of her sponsors, a large American corporation, and a swim clinic because of the controversy surrounding her shoots. By 2005 because of these constant shoots, many producers wanted her to lose weight bringing her body image down and causing her to start restricting and start cutting again.

Carl Edwards

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-08 18:13:15 UTC

After the Olympics, Amanda was conflicted whether to stop focusing on swim or not until she met Carl Edwards, a race car driver. She often accompanied him to all his NASCAR races and followed him to his events. For a while she thought it was nice and fun to be on his schedule however she quickly became restless. Along with that Carl began showing his flaws, trying to control her and became possessive. By springtime in 2006, she decided she had enough and didn't want to continue following him around, so she decided to end things with him.

Sasha

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-08 18:25:04 UTC

Soon after Carl, Amanda met Sasha who she'd worked with in September 2005 for a Speedo photo shoot and started talking to him. While they originally started out as friends out of respect for his girlfriend and Amanda just coming out of a relationship, they started dating a month after they had another Speedo shoot together. They had a lot of fun together, and Amanda decided to move to LA and buy a house to be with him in September 2006. They had a lot of rough patches between room styling, their past relationships, messiness, and typical things when two people move in together. However they also had a lot of good times. He was loyal, considerate, and mature because "He listened. Sasha knew what was important to me and how to make me feel important. If we were at an event filled with drop-dead gorgeous women, he could have cared less" (186).

Therapy

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-08 18:30:58 UTC

Amanda still wanted to go back to the Olympics and compete, so she reached out to her past coach, Dave Salo. Swimming again brought back some recurring problems and new ones like commute time, exhaustion, and team problems because her team tended to have a lot of drama. She became very stressed and often lashed out at Sasha. Even getting invited to the Espy Awards in 2007 didn't change her mindset, and she lashed out and threw fits more and more often. Eventually Sasha found out about her cutting when she accidentally cut too deep, and Sasha made her see a therapist. So, she looked online, found a therapist named Erika and "I started seeing Erika once a week, but the thing about therapy is that you don't feel healed right away" (200), but realized that "whether I understood things or not, whenever I left Erika's office, I felt better than when I had arrived" (202).

Peace

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-08 19:25:37 UTC

Amanda did a photo shoot naked for a magazine called Playboy for their July 2007 issue. She also switched from training with USC to UCLA and instantly bonded with the other girls on the team. By continuously training, she competed at the Olympic trials in Omaha, coming in 2nd in the 200 meter breaststroke to qualify for the Olympic team for the 4th time. Unfortunately she did not make it to the Olympics due to coming in 18th in the preliminaries. Despite that she continued living her life, and her and Sasha moved back to her hometown, Tuscon. She began weening off the pills and found herself very happy with Sasha when they got engaged during Christmas. She found out she was pregnant in late January, and they got married May 1st, 2009 on an island called Wakatobi. Later on September 15, 2009 at 11 a.m. Blaise Ray Brown was born, and she encountered many joyful and challenging events.

Final Olympic Attempt

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-08 21:54:08 UTC

By March 2008, Amanda fully recovered from having her baby and began training full time with a personal trainer, Mike LaCoss, to get in shape and compete in the Olympics. She competed in the 2010 USA Swimming Nationals in August in both the 100 and 200 meter breaststroke. She came in 6th in the 100 meter breaststroke and 2nd in the 200 meter breaststroke with a time of 2:26.50 to qualify for the Pan Pacific Swimming Championship. There she placed 5th in both breaststroke events, and "reporters asked me if I was disappointed, and it brought me back to my first Olympics, when they wondered if I was upset with silver. Yes, years earlier I would have been pissed with my results. But with an eleven-month-old son cheering me on, I was extremely satisfied" (236). In early August, the New York Times writer encouraged her to write this book on her struggles. There were some criticisms regarding her book, but thousands of praises that let her know how she was helping others through this book.

Bibliography

yuest000_1_1 — 2024-02-09 18:54:44 UTC

Beard, Amanda. in the water they can't see you cry. Edited by Rebecca Paley, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, New Delhi, Simon and Schuster, 2012.