6 stories from Olympians about close finishes that altered the course of their careers

Fractions of a second or a slight misstep during the Olympics can alter the career, the legacy or the earning potential of athletes.

Several athletes, including Michael Phelps, Edwin Moses and Simone Manuel, talked with The Associated Press about some of those lifechanging finishes.

One small step cost Jonathan Horton a gold medal

Jonathan Horton didn’t expect to make the Olympic high bar final in 2008.

Sure, the 45-second thrill ride that’s comprised of a series of intricate hand movements and daring releases is fun. It just wasn’t his best event, and he knew it.

That knowledge gave Horton a sense of freedom. He spent the days leading up to the finals coming up with a routine packed with difficulty on the fly, a routine he didn’t hit even once during practice. A routine his coach, longtime Oklahoma coach Mark Williams, begged him not to try.

“Before it was my turn, Mark was like, ‘Don’t do it, dude,’” Horton said.

Horton ignored that advice.

Everything that could have gone right, went right. Then came the dismount, when he unwrapped out of his triple twisting double backflip dismount a fraction early, leading to one small step and a tiny deduction that had him finish second, .025 points behind gold medalist Zou Kai of China.

“I’ll never forget the fact that everybody booed when I didn’t win, that was a win to me,” said Horton, who helped the U.S. win bronze in the team competition. “That was just awesome. I shouldn’t have been in that final first of all and then I shouldn’t have nailed this crazy routine.”

While the 38-year-old, married father of two admits he heard that small stop cost him seven figures in endorsement opportunities, he’s not bitter. He lives in Texas, where he sells insurance and makes the occasional motivational speaking appearance.

“I did everything there is to do, the only thing I didn’t do is win an Olympic gold medal,” Horton said. “I have no reason to complain. I’m very thankful and humbled by what God has done for me.”

— By Will Graves

Simone Manuel's close win helps diversify swimming

Growing up, Simone Manuel wondered why more people didn’t look like her at the pool.

That’s why it was so important to get her hand on the wall first at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

Manuel became the first Black female swimmer to claim an individual gold medal when she tied Canada’s Penny Oleksiak for the top spot in the 100-meter freestyle.

It was a performance that undoubtedly inspired countless swimmers of color to pursue their own dreams.

If Manuel had been a split-second slower, her impact on diversifying the sport would not have been nearly as profound.

“Honestly, it’s just mentality,” Manuel said when asked what takes to pull out a close race. “I think it’s really just the willingness to win. On top of that, it’s just your training. Every little millisecond or second comes down to how hard you’ve been training all year. It’s not like it just shows up at that moment in time.”

It’s a fine line, of course.

Manuel worked too hard leading up to the Tokyo Olympics, leading to a diagnosis of overtraining syndrome. After a lengthy break, she returned to the pool and qualified for her third Olympics in Paris.

No matter what she does the rest of her career, that tie for first in Rio will always be her most significant accomplishment.

“That is, in my book, as high as it gets,” said Bob Bowman, who began coaching Manuel after the Tokyo Games. “An individual gold medalist has reached the pinnacle. That’s it. And to have a Black woman do it, that’s significant.”

— By Paul Newberry

Edwin Moses talks about .02-second loss that ended 122-race streak

Every June 4, Edwin Moses calls hurdler Danny Harris to wish him a happy anniversary.

It was on June 4, 1987 at the Estadio de Vallehermoso in Madrid that Harris put a stop to Moses’ record-setting 122-race winning streak in the 400-meter hurdles.

Moses was overcoming food poisoning and could barely get out of bed that morning. He was chasing Harris down when his heel clipped the tenth hurdle, putting an end to a valiant bid to reel in his younger opponent.

Moses ran 47.69 that day and still only lost that race by .02 seconds.

Moses, now 68 and widely hailed as the best, most consistent hurdler of all time, says he raced that day because both he and Harris received better pay when they went against each other and “because I didn’t want anyone to think I was trying to dodge him.”

His initial reaction after the race was not disappointment.

“When I saw the (times on the scoreboard) I said, ‘Oh (expletive), I ran 47.6 like this?’” Moses said. “Now, I know I’m running 46.8 this year. That was the first thing that crossed my mind.”

Though the records are imprecise, Moses estimates he put together another win streak of between 10 and 20 races after that, including the last major gold medal of his storied career — at the 1987 world championships in Rome.

“If you concentrate on losing, then you’re going to have trouble the next time you face these guys,” Moses said. “I just thought he was the luckiest guy in the world that day.”

— By Eddie Pells

Split-second victory elevates Michael Phelps’ legacy

Michael Phelps didn’t necessarily need to win eight gold medals in Beijing to be remembered as perhaps the greatest Olympian of them all.

But his split-second victory over Milorad Cavic took his legacy to a whole new level.

“Absolutely,” said Bob Bowman, who was Phelps’ longtime coach. “Eight gold medals is what separates him from everyone else on the planet.”

In 2008, Phelps set his sights on taking down one of the most hallowed records in sports: Mark Spitz’s seven gold medals at the Munich Games 36 years earlier.

The quest caught a huge break early on when Jason Lezak chased down a French swimmer on the anchor leg to win an improbable gold in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay for a U.S. squad that had Phelps in the leadoff position.

But, with no margin for error — or even a silver medal — the bid for eight golds appeared over when Cavic came to the finish of the 100 butterfly with a seemingly comfortable lead over Phelps.

The Serbian decided to take a long glide to the wall, confident he couldn’t be caught.

Phelps, with nothing to lose, took an extra half-stroke that sent him slamming into the wall a hundredth of a second ahead of Cavic.

It wasn’t exactly the finish that Bowman envisioned, but it wasn’t a total surprise. For years, the coach had stressed to his star pupil the importance of that final stroke.

“Through his entire career, I had been pretty particular about finishing correctly with anything we did in practice,” Bowman said. “If he had a sloppy finish, I would make him go out and do it again. We made it a habit to get his hand on the wall properly all the time.”

It sure paid off in Beijing.

— By Paul Newberry

Christian Smith’s dive for 3rd put his name in track history books

On the wall in Christian Smith’s living room in Kansas is a framed portrait of the photo finish.

In it, Smith is a split-second from hitting the ground hard, chest first, at the tail end of the 800-meter final at the 2008 U.S. track trials.

More importantly, the photo shows his torso crossing the finish line third. That .06-second gap between him and fourth place meant he would, from that moment forward, forever be known as an Olympian.

“Without that race, it’s a good running career,” said Smith, whose accolades included the 2006 NCAA championship in the indoor mile. “But it doesn’t have the same impact of being able to say ‘I’m an Olympian.’”

There was no form chart, no track expert, who had pegged Smith as an Olympian that year. In the weeks leading up to trials, he was ranked No. 31 in the U.S. in the 800. Only the top 30 earned a spot in trials.

When a runner scratched from the race, Smith got his shot and made the most of it. Diving across the line is not in any runner’s playbook. But as Smith closed in, he could see how close things were going to be.

“It wasn’t a conscious decision, but it was an ‘I’m going to be leaning so hard to get in front that I’m going down for sure,’” he said.

It was worth every scratch and scrape.

“It was, by far, the most meaningful race of my career,” he said.

— By Eddie Pells

Alicia Sacramone Quinn can laugh now about her silver medal

The silver medal Alicia Sacramone Quinn won at the 2008 Beijing Olympics is, the former American gymnastics star admits, “in rough shape.”

It rests in the little case it came in somewhere inside a jewelry drawer at the house she owns in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The now-37-year-old doesn’t take it out much. The last time she remembers showing it in public was a year or two ago when she hung it around her dog’s neck as part of a Halloween costume.

In the aftermath of the 2008 team final, Quinn shouldered — unfairly, in hindsight — a share of the blame for finishing runner-up to host China.

Yes, her gymnastics that night weren’t her best. She fell on the balance beam. The Americans “lost.” Someone needed to be blamed in the moment. And she was it. The inbox of her Brown University email account was flooded with notes from strangers.

“I got some hilarious notes like ‘You ruined America’ and I’m like ‘America has bigger problems than me falling on my Arabian beam mount,’” she said, adding that it was the hate from random people that really upset her.

Looking back, Quinn — whose 10 world championship medals are the most by an American gymnast not named Simone Biles — wonders what might have been if she’d come back from China with gold. Maybe she would have retired and gone out on top.

Yet, if she had earned a gold in Beijing, maybe she wouldn’t be where she is now: as the co-head of the U.S. women’s national team program, a job she has grown to love.

Quinn gives athletes she now leads a valuable perspective on disappointment — or the thrill of victory.

“I tell them ‘It’s just a page in your story,’” she said. “Yes, it could be a great experience or it could be a bad one. But it’s just a page. It’s not the whole story.”

— By Will Graves