The Boy Who Raced His Hero

The story

Here is a photograph. A thirteen-year-old boy from Singapore, in his swimming gear, standing beside his hero — Michael Phelps, already one of the most famous swimmers on Earth, who had come to Singapore to train. The boy's name was Joseph Schooling. He was a dedicated young swimmer, training hard. And like a million kids with a million photos, he dreamed of becoming a great Olympic swimmer — like his hero.

Now — eight years later. The Olympic Games in Rio. The final of the hundred-metre butterfly. Eight swimmers on the blocks. In one lane: Michael Phelps, by now the most decorated Olympian in history. And a few lanes away: Joseph Schooling. The boy from the photograph. All grown up, and racing his hero for real.

The swimmers dive. Butterfly is often called the toughest stroke of all — both arms swinging over the water together, again and again, like wings. Joseph touches the wall first at the turn. But everyone knows about Phelps: he finishes like a storm.

Joseph holds on. Stroke after stroke, he keeps his lead — and touches the wall FIRST. Fifty seconds and thirty-nine hundredths. An Olympic record. Joseph Schooling had won Singapore's first Olympic gold medal ever. In the whole history of his country — the first.

And the silver medal? Something happened that had almost never happened before. THREE swimmers recorded exactly the same time — Michael Phelps and two other champions, sharing silver, all equal, behind the boy from Singapore.

Phelps swam over and hugged him. And Phelps later said he remembered that Singapore meeting. The kid who had asked him for a picture had grown into the man who beat him.

But here is the part of the story you don't see in the photograph. Between those two moments — the boy beside his hero, and the man on the podium — lie eight years of early mornings. Alarm clocks in the dark. Thousands of laps, up and down, up and down, when nobody was watching and nothing was shiny. Joseph moved far from home to train, and was often terribly homesick. THAT is what was hiding between the two photographs. Not magic. Mornings.

And when the National Anthem of Singapore rang out at the Olympic Games' medal podium for the very first time, every one of those mornings was in the music.

So find your photograph — the person who makes you think, I want to do THAT. You don't have to beat them. You just have to start your mornings. Because heroes are not really there to be beaten. They are there to show you how far the pool goes.