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Swimmer Ben Wildman-Tobriner lay on the bench press in Stanford's weight room, heaving the bar up and down. He heard a noise, and stopped moving.
It sounded like someone had ripped through a thick cloth. Only it came from the left side of Wildman-Tobriner's body.
Just nine months earlier, in March 2007, Wildman-Tobriner, '07, had become the darling of the swimming world when he captured an unexpected world title in the 50-meter freestyle at the 2007 World Championships. It was part of a productive year that saw the former Stanford star earn a degree in biomechanical engineering, take the entrance exam for medical school and sign a four-year contract with Speedo.
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Photo: Glenn Matsumura |
After his championship swim, and a subsequent first-place finish at the U.S. nationals last August, Wildman-Tobriner had emerged as a medal favorite for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. To get ready, he undertook a training regimen that included workouts with Stanford's team in the pool and intensive strengthening exercises.
As soon as he heard that noise on the weight bench, Wildman-Tobriner knew he was in trouble.
An MRI later that day confirmed that he had torn his left pectoral tendon completely off the humerus.
“That was the first major injury of my swimming career and my life,” Wildman-Tobriner says. “While no time is a good time to get an injury, that was pretty much the worst possible time.” That night, he lay on his couch, his 6-foot-4, 200-pound body suddenly useless in the sport he had known most of his life.
From the beginning, Wildman-Tobriner had seemed destined for the pool. His mother, Stephanie Wildman, '70, JD '73, swam four or five times each week throughout her pregnancy at the former Olympic champion Ann Curtis Cuneo's swim club in San Rafael, Calif. When her son was 4, Stephanie brought him to the club for lessons. Just a year or two later, Curtis Cuneo pulled her aside. “He has a gift,” she told her. By the time the boy was 8, he was setting swim league records. At Stanford, Wildman-Tobriner earned 20 All-America honors; senior year, he was named Pac-10 Swimmer of the Year and an Academic All-American.
Sitting on that couch the night after his injury, he felt disappointed. But from the next day on, he looked ahead. “I accepted that it happened and I knew that I was going to have to do a lot of hard work,” he says. “But even if there was no injury, it was going to require a lot of hard work to get where I wanted to be.” A few days later, he had surgery.
Not long after, Stanford coach Skip Kenney saw the swimmer, arm in sling, running sprints next to the pool while breathing out of a snorkel. When Kenney looked closer, he noticed that half of the snorkel hole was covered.
“In his events, he needs to take bites of air,” Kenney explains, and the snorkel simulates that process. Still, the coach laughed as he recalled the innovative ways Wildman-Tobriner kept training. “The mental strength he has put into his physical recovery has made all the difference.” Not that it surprised him. Wildman-Tobriner was always one to adapt. “He was always so coachable. He was willing to make changes even after he was a world champion,” Kenney says.
A few weeks after his surgery, Wildman-Tobriner and his trainer ordered a custom-made wetsuit top from a shop owner in Santa Cruz. It had a hole for the swimmer's right arm and a covered sling inside for his left. He carefully tucked his now-atrophied arm into the sling, had a friend zip him up and returned to the water to swim with one arm. “Somebody better watch him,” his teammates teased. “He might sink to the bottom.”
Wildman-Tobriner swam that way for about a month, in addition to undergoing physical therapy. Then he let his left arm float freely while he swam. Then, slowly, he began using his left arm again. By mid-May, he was competing again, finishing fourth at a meet in Santa Clara.
“He was asking more from himself than the guys who were not injured,” Stanford associate head coach Ted Knapp, '81, says. Wildman-Tobriner was focused on not letting the injury define him, Knapp notes, but rather “letting the recovery from it be his legacy.”
With the Summer Games around the corner, Wildman-Tobriner said in May he felt close to full strength and he didn't think the injury would affect his performance at the Olympic trials, where he planned to compete in the 50- and 100-meter freestyle. Still, he keeps the wetsuit top in his locker. He figures maybe NBC will be interested in seeing it when he makes the trip to Beijing.
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