Golden Girl, Golden Book
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Michael Silver's book about Natalie Coughlin starts in the moments before she won her Olympic gold medal at Athens. His sports writers background allows him to tell the story with drama and conveys the final thrashing strokes to the wall. It makes you want to read the rest of the book, which tells the story of an inspiring competitor who struggles with injury and inappropriate training regimes. She is rescued by a woman trainer who treats Coughlin as a person not as a machine and who brings out the best in a very talented athlete.
A major criticism of the book could be that the writer tends to get distracted from the central character to tell the stories of the people in Coughlin's development. Whilst many are informative and some amusing the tales detract from the amount that could have been written about Coughlin herself who we only get to understand and know in odd phrases that are dropped in and never fully developed. In many ways the book under sells the achievements and the personality of Natalie Coughlin, perhaps because she had some part in the writing of the book. It also never delves too deep into many issues perhaps because of the same reason.
Even with some weak areas this was a book that I read from cover to cover. I have no interest in swimming or in American swimming but the story is worth reading for the small changes that can make any athlete great. Coughlin's story inspires and should be standard reading for any competitor planning to compete in the Olympics in 2008 or in 2012.
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