Costco Connection - July 2008

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Costco members go for the glory

THERE ARE MANY routes to the Olympics. For some Costco members, the path involves carrying the banner of the USA as one of the dominant athletes in their sport. Others participate in supporting roles that may receive less attention, but are no less important, as coaches, physicians, trainers and more. For the next few issues, leading up to the August 2008 Olympics in Beijing, The Connection would like to share the stories of Costco members who are on the road to gold.

Sync or swim

KATE HOOVEN looks like the quintessential California beach girl: 23 years old, blonde and beautiful. Her interests lie far beyond sun, surf and sand—she’s determined to win a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics as a co-captain of the 2008 USA Women’s Synchronized

Swimming Team.

Hooven’s passion for the sport began in 1996, at age 11, when she took a recreational class at her local aquatic center in Walnut Creek, California. That passion gained added inspiration when the team event made its debut in medal competition at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta and the U.S. women took home the gold.

Even at that early age, Hooven was committed enough to devote two to three hours a day, five days a week, in training.

“As you get older, the hours gradually get longer,” Hooven explains. With Beijing looming, she is (lite rally) submerged in the discipline, usually training from 8 a.m. to 3 or 4 p.m. She reports, “Today, we were in the pool from 8 to 2 and then I went running for an hour.” That’s six days a week. On Sunday they rest.

Admits Hooven, “Whatever energy I have left, I try to let loose and have fun with my friends.”

She also proves a passionate advocate for the sport. “A lot of people think synchro is not hard or a sport at all. It’s very difficult to lift someone when you have nothing really to push off of. I encourage people to get in the water and actually try. Really try it. It’s harder than you think.”—Steve Fisher

MICHAEL MULLER

Different
strokes

KEN BROMAN

COSTCO MEMBER Dara Torres first starting thinking about competing in the Olympics when she was 13 years old. She’s had a lot of time to think about it.

The 41-year-old, who swam in her first competitive race at the age of 14, has competed in four Olympics (1984, 1988, 1992 and 2000) and is preparing for her fifth, which would make her the first swimmer to make five Olympic teams and the oldest female Olympic swimmer ever. She has won nine medals, four of them gold, and in 1994 became the first female athlete to appear beside supermodels in a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

Has all of this gone to her head? Says Torres, “I think the fact that I’m as old as a lot of my competitors’ parents” helps to keep things in perspective.—TFJ

Kate Hooven (front, left) and the 2008 USA Women’s Synchronized Swimming Team.

From Russia with love

UNABLE TO AFFORD a babysitter during their early years in the United States, Valeri and Anna Liukin, recent émigrés from Moscow, Russia, were

SPEEDO USA/MICHAEL MULLER

forced to bring their daughter, Anastasia (Nastia) to the gym while they worked. The two gymnastics coaches, both of whom had earned world and/or Olympic championships earlier in their careers, soon found it impossible to ignore their young daughter’s talent and her desire to be involved. “I was always running around and on the bars, and that’s kind of how I started,” Nastia Liukin remembers. “It became like a huge playground for me.” By the time she was

12, Nastia was an elite gymnast, at 16 she was nominated for the World Top 10 Athletes Award and now, at 19, she is one of the most decorated American gymnasts in world championship history.

She was lucky, says the Costco member, in that “I fell in love with the sport at an early age. Knowing how much my parents have accomplished has really inspired me to achieve.”