CHENEY – When Amy Van Dyken retired from swimming immediately after the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Tom Rouen let out a sigh of relief.
No more 4:30 a.m. alarm clocks. No more 1,000 days of training for one or two events.
Van Dyken, then Rouen’s fiance, could finally live a normal life.
And then, sometime in 2002, when the couple had been married for a year or so, Rouen got the call.
“I’m thinking of doing something. Call me back,” Rouen recalls hearing on a voice mail from his wife, a four-time gold medalist.
“And then by the time I called her back,” he said this week, “she had changed her mind.”
Rouen, now the Seattle Seahawks’ punter, can breathe a bit easier this Olympics. His wife won’t be at the Games (although she will be doing analysis from the studios of KPNX television in Phoenix).
It would seem safe to assume that Rouen won’t have a vested interest in what’s going on in Athens over the next two weeks, but that would be incorrect. Turns out that Olympic wrestler Rulon Gardner is one of Rouen’s best friends.
“He and I are real tight,” said Rouen, who used to go snowmobiling with Gardner before the wrestler’s near-tragic accident in 2002. “It’s been so much fun to see him continue his quest. You talk about one of the greatest stories of all time.”
Gardner’s story will continue at this year’s Olympics, more than two years after a snowmobile accident left him frostbitten and near death. He is back to defend his gold medal in the heavyweight division of Greco-Roman wrestling.
“For him to be able to win another gold,” Rouen said, “I think that would go down as one of the greatest stories of all-time.”
Rouen and Gardner met as part of a charity event in Colorado that Van Dyken and her husband put together to benefit children. Rather than run a typical golf tournament, Rouen and Van Dyken opted for a charity skeet shoot.
“I called Rulon because I knew he was an outdoorsman,” Rouen said. “We just hit it off.”
Unfortunately, Rouen’s Olympic ties aren’t enough to get him out of training camp. Like he did in 2000, when he was in Greeley, Colo., preparing with the Denver Broncos, Rouen won’t get to see much of this year’s Summer Games.
“These people, for four years, they lay everything they’ve got on the line for one week,” he said. “There’s no tomorrow for them, because most of them won’t be young enough to do it a second time around.
“It’s humbling to see people work so hard at something that they’ve worked so long for.”
Rouen knows first-hand what it takes. He wasn’t dating Van Dyken when she went to the 1996 Games in Atlanta, but he was in her life for the months of training she went through between Olympics.
“One thousand days of training,” he marveled. “I can’t even imagine that. That’s like training 1,000 days for the Super Bowl.”
After winning three gold medals in the 1996 Games, Van Dyken was part of a gold medal-winning 4×100 relay team in Sydney four years ago. Rouen saw all the hard work that went into that medal, so he now has a different perspective of Olympians.
“The Olympic trials are so nerve-wracking because you have to have your A-game that day, or you’re not going,” he said. “All your dreams are over before they’ve even started.”
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