Steve Clark, Olympic Swimmer Shadowed by Depression, Dies at 82

Steve Clark, a two-time Olympic swimmer who gained three gold medals for the United States on the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo and, many years later, candidly acknowledged the melancholy that he and plenty of Olympians expertise when their careers finish, died on April 14 at his house in Larkspur, Calif., within the Bay Area. He was 82.

The trigger was issues of Parkinson’s illness, his spouse, Betsy Clark, mentioned.

From the time of the traditional Greeks, Olympians have been considered as the best of human kind, would possibly, velocity and endurance, however out of the pool, away from the enjoying area, they’ve additionally been reminders of human susceptibility.

Prominent latest Olympians just like the swimmer Michael Phelps and the gymnast Simone Biles have freely mentioned psychological well being points like anxiousness and strain that accompany careers. These usually hinge on peaking each 4 years for the Winter or Summer Games, adopted by a sense of vacancy, typically known as Gold Medal Syndrome.

“We all get depressed when we retire; it’s like, Who are we?” mentioned Donna de Varona, who gained two swimming gold medals on the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and has recommended athletes as they transition to completely different careers.

In Clark’s period, athletes had been anticipated to be stoic. To acknowledge vulnerability was usually considered as an indication of psychological weak point. In an unpublished 2012 essay, he wrote that he wrestled with melancholy intermittently for 30 years between 1966 and 1996 however saved it to himself principally out of embarrassment and “faked feeling normal.”

Swimming for Clark was “like a mental and physical health practice,” his daughter Nicki Clark mentioned in an interview.

“My dad struggled with depression most of his life,” Ms. Clark added. “I feel like it’s a big part of his story. I think he knew how important it was to move his body. Swimming was in his blood. Even when he didn’t want to, I think he would sort of make himself because it always made him feel better.”

Clark got here to athletic prominence whereas nonetheless in highschool within the Bay Area, when he competed within the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. In 1964, whereas attending Yale University, he delivered three stirring performances that helped result in Olympic gold medals and crew world data within the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, the 4×200-meter freestyle relay and the 4×100-meter medley relay.

During his profession, he gained 5 particular person N.C.A.A. titles, set a number of world data and was the primary man to swim the 100-yard freestyle beneath 47 and 46 seconds. He was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1966.

“If you want to work with and live with saints, get a bunch of Steve Clarks,” Phil Moriarty, his coach at Yale, advised The New York Times in 1964. “He has everything good in an athlete — attitude, ability, importance as a team member, no temperament.”

Clark retired from swimming in 1965, the yr he graduated from Yale with a bachelor’s diploma in political science. The Olympics had been for amateurs in these days. There was little or no cash to be made. After a break, he entered Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1969, however realized instantly that the qualities that made him a terrific swimmer didn’t put together him to assume analytically as a regulation scholar.

“I had developed myself as a swimmer,” he wrote within the essay, “but what I didn’t develop was an identity apart from swimming.”

He described a lot of his regulation profession, spent in Northern California, as unfulfilling. At instances, he lacked confidence, one thing that didn’t elude him within the pool. His ingesting elevated and, in 1996, his first marriage — to Etta Müller, with whom he had three daughters — led to divorce.

He quickly started seeing a psychiatrist, who prescribed remedy, and a psychologist, who offered speak remedy. He started to really feel aid from his melancholy, in the end stopped ingesting with assist from Alcoholics Anonymous, and repurposed his sports activities background by offering authorized steerage and monetary companies to skilled athletes.

De Varona mentioned that Clark had supported the American swimmer Rick DeMont, who futilely sought to have his 1972 Olympic gold medal reinstated after it was stripped — many really feel unjustly — when he examined optimistic for a banned substance contained in his prescribed bronchial asthma remedy.

Clark additionally started swimming three or 4 instances per week and took part in open-water occasions in locations just like the chilly currents close to Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. He additionally coached highschool and masters swimmers. Along the way in which, he wrote, he realized “how not to be a perfectionist.”

In 2005, he donated one in all his Olympic gold medals to Yale in honor of Moriarty, his former coach. “The gold is still shiny but the ribbons are as faded as I am,” Clark said on the time. “I don’t want to live on past athletic glory.” It was, he mentioned, “not the way I was raised.”

Stephen Edward Clark was born on June 17, 1943, in Oakland, Calif. His father, Lyman Clark, labored in gross sales for the Westinghouse Electric Company. His mom, Mary Margaret (Simon) Clark, ran the family and did volunteer work.

At age 9, Steve started swimming competitively on the Santa Clara (Calif.) Swim Club, the place the famend coach George Haines helped develop Olympic champions like Clark, Don Schollander, de Varona and Mark Spitz.

Clark skilled tendinitis in his shoulder on the 1964 Olympic trials and didn’t qualify in particular person occasions for the Tokyo Games. He did make the American relay groups, and his shoulder discomfort subsided earlier than the Olympics started.

Clark’s searing leadoff leg within the 4×100-meter freestyle relay in Tokyo equaled the person world document for the 100-meter freestyle, 52.9 seconds. Had he been eligible to swim the person 100-meter freestyle race, he would have been a favourite. Instead, the victor was his teammate and rival, Schollander, who turned the primary swimmer to win 4 gold medals in a single Olympics.

Before getting into regulation faculty, Clark coached in Peru and wrote an early teaching guide, “Competitive Swimming As I See It” (1967). Among different issues, he instructed with dry humor that the frequent follow of shaving the physique to cut back drag within the water was overrated.

A ready swimmer, Clark wrote, “is not going to abruptly swim a terrible race simply because he forgot to shave five hairs off his belly button.”

In addition to his daughter Nicki, he’s survived by his spouse, Betsy (Anderson) Clark, whom he married in 2000; two different daughters, Nina Sealander and Kim Fowler; a sister, Sally Clark Michel; and 6 grandchildren.

Clark spoke to younger folks, encouraging them to not really feel responsible or ashamed of their melancholy. In his unpublished essay, he instructed that life stability and self-awareness might assist ease the arduous transition to on a regular basis life for world-class athletes.

“The goal is to help athletes break out of that tunnel-vision focus, workout-induced endorphins and singular drive for perfection,” he wrote, “in order to open them up to a different world which does not measure success by a stopwatch.”