Greg Hansen: Seven-time Olympic medalist Amanda Beard is coming back to Arizona, her alma mater, to help revive the Wildcats' struggling swimming program; don't bet against them succeeding.
Greg Hansen An ESPN"College GameDay" producer called Amanda Beard in November 2009 and asked if she would be the guest prognosticator at the Arizona-Oregon football game.She had not won an Olympic swimming medal since 2004, but to ESPN, Beard’s name, image and likeness carried more punch than that of Francona, who had managed the Boston Red Sox to the 2008 World Series championship.
Now, 14 years later, Beard answered an even more important phone call from Tucson. This time it was from Augie Busch, the UA swimming coach who since 2017 has been struggling to rebuild Arizona’s once-proud program to its glory days. Football coach Jedd Fisch hired College Football Hall of Famers Chuck Cecil and Ricky Hunley — perhaps the two leading football players in UA history — to help start the reconstruction of Arizona’s football program.
When UA coach Frank Busch, Augie’s father, began to recruit Beard three years later, she no longer had Olympics-level speed. She had grown eight inches and gained 30 pounds. The physiological changes to her body robbed her of her medal-winning flexibility in the pool. It was as if she had to start over learning the mechanics of world-class swimming.
Incredibly, two days later, Beard came from 10 yards back to finish second and earn a spot at the 2000 Olympics.That was the completion of a rebuild that few, if any, saw coming.
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