Now I Know by Dan Lewis Page B

a bronze on the horizontal bar and pommel horse, and, due to his combined success, took the “combined four events” silver.
    Eyser’s medals in the 1904 Games would be the last won by a person with an artificial leg until the 2012 games in London. His mere participation in the Games was also a century-long feat—not until 2008, when South African swimmer Natalie de Toit participated in the Beijing Games, did another person with an artificial leg compete in the Olympics.
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    BONUS FACT
    If you look at the 1904 Summer Olympics results, you’ll also see a men’s gymnastics event that took place on July 1 and 2, with medals awarded to the top three teams, the three best all-around gymnasts, and the top three finishers in the “men’s triathlon.” The triathlon consisted of the horizontal bar, parallel bars, and the horse (itself split into vault and pommel horse). Eyser finished tenth. But the other two events were a mix of gymnastics and what we’d now call track and field. Those events consisted of the gymnastic triathlon as well as the “athletic triathlon”—shot put, the 100-yard dash, and the long jump. Eyser, at a distinct disadvantage in the track-and-field portions, finished seventy-first in the all-around.
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OUT OF SYNC
AN OLYMPIC MEDALIST’S HIDDEN SECRET
    In the 2001 World Aquatics Championship in Fukuoka, Japan, a fifteen-year-old Chinese diver, Wu Minxia, and her partner, Guo Jingjing, took gold in the women’s synchronized springboard competition. For Wu, this would be the start of well over a decade of dominance. She’d earn gold in the event at the 2003, 2007, 2009, and 2011 World Aquatics Championships. Even more impressively, she took gold at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, the 2008 Games in Beijing, and the 2012 London Games—becoming the first woman diver to win gold medals at three different Olympics.
    Reaching such heights requires some sacrifice, and for many Olympic-class athletes, their partners, coaches, trainers, and the like are akin to family. But in Wu’s case, that’s an understatement. Those people were, undoubtedly, closer to the diver than she was to her own parents. We know this because of what happened soon after Wu won her record-setting Olympic gold medal in Athens.
    According to the AFP, Wu’s parents had decided to hide some family news from their daughter until after her final Olympic dive. After she took the medal stand (although thankfully, not immediately after), they informed her that two of her grandparents had died—more than a year prior. Perhaps worse, they told her that her mother had breast cancer and had been battling it for eight years. (By the time of the Olympics, it was fortunately in remission.) Wu had, effectively, lived a separate life from her family.
    Other reports flew in. According to TheWeek.com , Wu spent the ten years prior to the London Games separated from her parents. At age sixteen—just a few months after her gold in Fukuoka—she left home to attend a government-run swimming and diving school. Her parents told the media that they’ve “known for years that [their] daughter doesn’t belong to [them] any more,” and admitted that they “never talk about family matters” with her.
    Even that may be an understatement. As the AFP reported, when Wu’s parents arrived in London for the 2012 games, they barely communicated with her before the diving event—they sent her a text message, telling her they had arrived safely, but otherwise had no contact with their daughter.
    They did not even go see her before her final dive.
    The Chinese rank and file did not take kindly to these admissions. Many took to the microblogging service Sina Weibo (similar to Twitter, but censored and controlled by the Chinese government), bemoaning the parents’ actions. But their ire wasn’t focused only on the Wu family. Many blamed the national sports program—which, as Yahoo! reported, took a very hardline view toward earning victory: That year, the