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Miller went to LaSalle High School in Philadelphia,
where 150 of the 800 students in the school
were rowers. "It was very big there. But after a while
some kids drop out. I just fell in love with it," he says.
Early on in high school, Miller was also a cross-country
runner, but in his junior year, he gained 50 pounds
and grew several inches. "I went from 170 to 220,
so that ended cross country. But it was great for rowing."
Miller's brother rows for the United States
Naval Academy and his sister was a varsity rower at
Clemson University. "I'm not so sure she isn't the best
of us," he says.
Miller tried not to let himself feel too down after
the loss.
"We spent a week in Australia after it. Did all the
usual tourist things," he says. "My parents rented an
apartment downtown and I moved in there. We went
to an opera, to the Blue Mountains. I did have a really
good time. But it still would have been nicer to win."
Bayer had taken a year's leave from Wharton to
train for the Olympics. He traveled the world for
major tournaments, as selection for the Olympic fencing
competitions is based on accumulating points
from world competitions the previous year.
Though he trained with his coaches at the New
York Athletic Club in Manhattan, Bayer also went
to places like Cuba, China, France and Germany
to compete. He went from 85th in the world foil
rankings to as high as 8th, winning one gold medal
in a tournament in St. Petersburg, Russia, along the
way. He was the only American to qualify for the
foil competition at the Olympics, with only one
other foil fencer, a Venezuelan, coming from the
Western Hemisphere. "It was going to be difficult,
but I thought I would do well," says Bayer. But Kim
was the one man he feared and when Bayer found out
he would have to face him in the second round, he
was a bit worried. "He has a different style. He is
very quick. I only wish I could have faced him later,
after a few other bouts. But he beat me and that
is that."
Bayer hopes his experience over the last year helps
to improves the image of American fencing. "Before,
they would say, ‘Well, Americans aren't very good,' " he says.
"Now, maybe they will say, ‘There is an American who
could win a major tournament.'"
Like Miller, Bayer has a family legacy in wrestling,
his brother having been on the Princeton team. Bayer
is spending the rest of the year in New York, working
for Convergence Advisors, a venture capital firm,
and will return to Wharton this fall. And like Miller,
he is retired – for now. "The Olympics is an amazing
experience," he says. "It's not like tennis, where you
have three or four major tournaments a year that
everyone goes to. Basically, this is it – once every four
years – and you have to work really hard to get up for
it. We'll just have to see about the future."
Slay has the same sentiments.
"Right now, I'm leaning toward ending my
wrestling career. But things are just moving around
me so quickly and I'm just 25, so I don't want to leap
and cut off other things," says Slay. He's had job
offers in San Francisco and is considering starting a
business with Brown called More Than Gold that
would focus, via camps and speaking engagements,
on motivating children toward seemingly unreachable
goals. He's also had feelers from Hollywood for
acting and writing possibilities.
"But I go back to those hours on Bondi Beach,"
he says. "That's when I started realizing that joy and
happiness doesn't have to come from winning and
losing, but giving a complete effort to work toward
a goal. I may have that gold medal now, but I didn't
then," he says. "So it gave me a chance to know that
losing only comes from missing out on that opportunity
to learn and grow, which gives you the motivation
to get that opportunity to succeed for future
challenges. That is what it is all about."
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