The Things You Don’t Spot.

a screenshot from the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games. This was the 100 meter backstroke final.

This weekend, one of my dearest friends, Allison, was in town to visit, and we spent a good chunk of the weekend watching the Olympics. She’s a former swimmer herself — she swam at our alma mater, and was fast enough to swim at the Olympic trials in her home country of Canada. (She finished two seconds away from qualifying for the 2004 Olympics in Athens.)

So I was excited to watch some of the swimming with her. What I didn’t realize is that we’d end up watching completely different races.

While I was yelling about the obvious stuff (“They’re so close to the world record line!”), Allison was noticing all the little details. During a backstroke race, a favorite was behind with 50 meters to go. “Did you see that moment of panic?” she asked me. I had not. We rewound and paused, and sure enough, there was a quarter-second where the swimmer glanced right, realized how far behind he was, and kicked it into high gear. It’s the kind of thing that you’d never notice — unless, of course, like Allison, you’d spent thousands of hours in the pool, competing at some of the highest levels of the sport.

Over the course of the morning, she pointed out tiny details over and over again. When one swimmer suddenly lost his lead coming out of the turn, Allison explained that he’d gone too deep out of his flip turn and lost momentum. When one swimmer was disqualified for an illegal touch on the wall, Allison spotted it seconds before the TV crew.

It’s gotten me thinking about all the other things I wouldn’t spot — and have been completely oblivious to all these years! — that a true expert can see right away. Having that depth of knowledge gives you a superpower: The ability to analyze in real time, at speeds that the rest of us can’t. It’s something that I know I strive for in my work: When someone throws a new problem or challenge at me, do I know enough that I could diagnose the problem — and suggest a solution — right then and there?

I’ll never be able to spot the things in swimming that Allison can spot right away. But it’s fun to know that if I ever have a question, I’ve got just the swimming expert a phone call away.

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That’s a screenshot from this year’s 100 meter men’s swimming final. To be honest, I watched that clip three times to get the screenshot, and even now, I can’t recall what they were talking about when that swimmer got circled on screen.