SWIMMER BUESE STROKES THROUGH WAVES OF LIFE
Posted by Alex
Lisa Buese was one of the best swimmers in the world in 1980 and a medal contender at the Moscow Olympic Games. However, her dreams of Olympic glory were dashed as the United States team boycotted the Moscow Games in response to the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. Featured in the book BOYCOTT: STOLEN DREAMS OF THE 1980 MOSCOW OLYMPIC GAMES, ($25.95, New Chapter Press, Buese managed to overcome the disappointment of the boycott and, as profiled below from the book, found that a shiny quarter found on the floor of Boston taxi cab was worth much more than Olympic gold.
BOYCOTT: STOLEN DREAMS OF THE 1980 MOSCOW OLYMPIC GAMES, written by Tom and Jerry Carccioli, chronicles the stories of Buese and her fellow Olympic team members who trained thousands of hours for their once-in-a-lifetime chance at Olympic glory in Moscow only to become pawns in a political Cold War chess match between superpowers. The book also outlines the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that led to the boycott, efforts by some athletes to overturn to the boycott by legal means and the entire 1980 team’s eventual ceremonial gold. Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale wrote the book’s foreword.
Eleven years after Lisa Buese was denied the opportunity to swim in the 1980 Olympic Summer Games in Moscow, her resilience and her determination were to be tested in a way the 28-year-old former world-class swimmer would never have imagined.
Her life perspective had been profoundly tested by the unimaginable disappointment of 1980. Still, that paled in comparison to what happened while running along the scenic Boston paths near the Charles River. “I was living in Boston, my second year out of business school,” Buese explains. “I had done several marathons and triathlons. One day I was running outside along the Charles River and basically, what happened, to make a long story short, I ended up at Massachusetts General Hospital with an episode of sudden cardiac death.” Buese’s heart, the heart of an Olympian who, based on her times, would have undoubtedly won an Olympic medal in Moscow, had stopped. Twenty-eight-years-old and clinically dead.
“It was a an eye-opener,” says Buese matter-of-factly 16-years later. “I had never been in the hospital before. Being a very physically fit person, I had taken to running and other things to keep myself healthy and fit. Lo and behold, I had this episode of sudden cardiac death at 28 years old. I remember lying in the hospital and them asking me if I had done any drugs and I said, ‘No. No. No.’ I was extremely lucky to be living so close to the hospital and have some of the world’s leading cardiologists at the hospital I was in.
“I had a congenital condition. It was an electrical problem that caused my heart to beat incredibly fast. They said had I not been so incredibly fit I may not have survived it.I had my swimming days to thank for that, as far as taking care of my body and paying attention to it.”
Buese was born in Chicago and grew up in Louisville, Ky., two cities more known for big-shouldered athletes and thoroughbreds, not for producing world-class swimmers. At an early age, Buese’s parents got all five of their children involved in swimming. Lisa, number four in line with three older brothers and a younger sister, immediately excelled in the water. “At some point in time they realized I had a little bit of talent, and I was enjoying doing it, so they had me swimming in summer club leagues,” Buese says. “I had won a few races here and there. The next thing I knew I was swimming all year round and competing for an Amateur Athletic Union team.”
Buese’s progress stalled at age 10, so her father suggested switching back to the coach who had originally taught her to swim—Dennis Pursley. From then on, Buese’s improvement was dramatic. Like anything, Buese knew her success did not come without help and support. “My father, who was an executive and worked extremely hard, made time to get me up at 4:30 in the morning to take me to practice. My mother would do the afternoon shift while raising five kids without any help. They were committed to my success, as were my siblings.”
As Buese advanced into the 12 to 13-year-old age group, she was part of a core group of swimmers that started doing well and performing on a national level. One in particular, a girl from the Plantation Swim Team in Louisville, was also beginning to turn heads with her talent as a butterflyer—Mary T.Meagher. “We grew up across the street from each other,” remembers Buese of one of USA Swimming’s all-time greats. “We were both butterflyers. I was also a freestyler. Our coach did something unique for girls that age. We would swim morning workouts at the age of 13.I had school so I would get up at 4:30 and my father would make a bagel and take me and the rest of my carpool, including Mary T., over to the pool. We would swim morning practice. Mary T. and I would come a little bit later than everybody else and stay a little later so that we would have more room in the pool to swim one-on-one and train against each other. I think we were both complementary to each other, having that other person there to push each other to do their best.”
Around that time, Buese’s Olympic dream began to take focus. At 13 years old, she made the National Junior Olympic team and placed second. From there she competed in the 1976 nationals and was becoming a top-caliber swimmer. If she was looking for inspiration for her next step, she didn’t have to look far. “In my hometown there was a woman by the name of Camille Wright who swam in the Olympics,” Buese recalls. “There was a lot of local talent with national caliber. Then there was a group a few years older than me that were all national-caliber swimmers—a woman by the name of Robin Wright, no relation [to the actress], Rosemary Boone and a couple other swimmers.”
Buese knew the Olympics was not a pie-in-the-sky dream anymore. “A lot of it probably came from my coach,” she admits. “I think he knew I had the talent to get there, and dedication and determination. It wasn’t something I thought about every day. It was more like day-to-day and taking each season as it came. I happened to peak at the right time in 1980.”
Buese’s Olympic odyssey hit a crossroad when she was 16—one year before the 1980 Olympic trials. Pursley had taken a job in nearby Ohio coaching the Cincinnati Marlins swimming club. Buese, and the rest of her teammates, contemplated what Pursley’s departure meant. At the time, Lakeside Swim Club, Buese’s training facility in Louisville, didn’t have an indoor Olympic-size pool. With Pursley headed to Cincinnati, Buese discussed the situation with her parents. “We all decided that I shouldn’t change my coach one year before the Olympic Trials,” Buese says. “One: He taught me how to swim. Two: He came back and helped turn me into an elite national swimmer. I made the conscious decision to move to Cincinnati for my junior year in high school and boarded with a family.”
The Caseys of Cincinnati became Buese’s surrogate family. They had three daughters and only one was still at home. They had nothing to do with swimming and created an ideal environment for Buese to continue training for the Olympics and to continue her junior year in high school. Eventually, other individuals Buese had trained with and gotten to know migrated to Cincinnati to train with Pursley as well. It paid off for everyone—eventually six swimmers trained by Pursley would make the 1980 team.
At the Olympic Trials, Buese needed to finish in the top three of an event to earn a spot on the Olympic team. It came down to her best event, the 100 butterfly. After spending thousands of hours swimming, working out and focusing on the moment at hand, the 17-year-old was poised and ready for the final race. Unfortunately, domestic politics forced her to wait a little longer. “At the time, Ronald Reagan was the governor of California and they always had someone like that to present the awards after each event,” Buese remembers with a laugh. “This was my last opportunity and I just remember we had to wait for Ronald Reagan to land because he was coming in his helicopter to hand out the awards at the end of the race. We had to wait for an extra half hour to begin.”
When Buese finally got to race she touched the wall and immediately turned to the scoreboard. “It was a funky scoreboard so every time someone touched, it reorganized itself,” Buese recalls. “When I touched, it actually looked like I had finished fourth, but I finished third. It was a bittersweet moment.
“Even though we knew we weren’t going to go [to Moscow], it was a goal that I wanted to make the team. I think back to my coach, Dennis Pursley, and when I had accomplished the goal of making the Olympic team. He said, ‘You’re in the top one percent of Americans in terms of accomplishments.’ ”
Buese didn’t let the boycott stop her from continuing her life and swimming career. She attended Stanford University on a scholarship and decided to shun thoughts of 1984 and Los Angeles. “After 1980, it was always very important to me to have balance in my life. My parents stressed that if you put too much focus into one thing you’re going to get out of whack. So, I pursued different opportunities while at Stanford. I went over to Florence, Italy, in 1984.I was over there on an academic program in the spring of 1984 before the Olympic Trials. I had consciously decided—I had spent so much of my childhood focused on swimming, not necessarily at the expense of other things, but there was a cost for everything—given the boycott and things you couldn’t control, that I had attained my goal of making the Olympic team and felt like there were other things in life to move on to.”
The bittersweet remnants of that time, though faded, still resonate when an event triggers a memory of the 17-year-old butterflyer from Louisville by way of Chicago. The first time Buese appreciated the reality of missing the 1980 Olympics was during the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta. Buese had travelled to Georgia to visit her brother. “My niece and I went [to the Games].I remember, my coach Dennis Pursley was the U.S. swim team director and he was on deck there.That to me brought it full circle, because here was someone who taught me how to swim and helped me attain my goals and was still involved in the sport and excelling quite well as a coach and manager. Here I was, a spectator. That was the first time I ever really thought back on it.”
If that day in Atlanta brought Buese back to one of the darker times of her athletic career, surely her fateful run along the Charles River brought perspective to her life of today. In the middle of her run, Buese started to feel faint. “Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz in the poppy fields,” she recalls with a chuckle. Buese managed to get herself to an office building with no identification and no money. With her heart racing away inside her chest, Buese explained to the security guard that she needed to get to a hospital and asked if he could lend her the cash to get there.
With $5 of the guard’s money, Buese got into a cab. “When I got in … there was a quarter on the floor of the cab. I don’t know what I was thinking but I picked it up,” Buese remembers with exasperation. “I was on the other side of the Charles River, the Cambridge side of the river, and I remember sitting at a red light thinking, ‘I’m going to die. I’m going to die.’ Luckily, he got me there and the fare was exactly $5.25.”
For Lisa Buese, a gold, silver or bronze medal from Moscow would have served as the symbol of the sacrifice and hard work of her youth. But the 25 cents she found on the floor of a Boston cab may well be the unknowing symbol of her life’s perspective and ultimate achievement.
“It didn’t dawn on me at the time, maybe because of the insular world I was in, what a huge achievement that I would hold onto my whole life,” says the 45-year-old mother about making the 1980 U.S. Olympic team. “It really was. It is something I’ll always have and no one can ever take away from me. When I’m faced with difficult situations, I know I have it in me to rise up to the challenge no matter what the challenge is.”
