Today Tracy is in many ways an unexceptional 15-year-old. She lolls around her Nashville home in T-shirt and jeans, uses the word "gross" to describe anything unpleasant and listens reverently to soft rock. She teases her brother and argues with her sister. She's begun to read fashion magazines and nags her mom for experimental shades of lipstick and eye shadow.
In Tracy's room, however, near her collection of stuffed Snoopies, is evidence of how different she is from other teenagers. Framed on the wall are approximately 500 medals she has won swimming on four continents. Not yet mounted are five gold medals and one silver she was awarded in August at the World Aquatic Championships in Berlin. In the last 18 months Tracy has set an astounding 10 American and three world records. (Her most prized: a 4:40.83 in the 400-meter individual medley, besting the former women's mark by nearly two seconds.) The Berlin meet, where Caulkins helped the U.S. whip the powerful East Germans, raised American hopes substantially for the 1980 Olympics.
Tracy aims to come back from Moscow with seven gold medals—five for individual events, two for relays. "I want it and I am going to work for it," she says. She is strongest in butterfly and breast but is also competitive in freestyle and backstroke. In the pool six mornings a week at 6:30 a.m., she swims a total of 60 miles. In the same period she runs 11 miles and lifts weights (she can press 140 pounds). "I get tired sometimes, but I enjoy it," she says. "If anybody is going to do this, they'd better enjoy it."
Tom Caulkins, a county school research coordinator who used to coach basketball, figures he has spent $20,000 on his daughter for travel, fees and equipment. She began swimming because the local club needed kids for the 8-and-under age group. Her brother Tim, now 19, and sister Amy, now 17, were already members. Tracy threw herself into the sport and won her first AAU event, 25-yard backstroke, the same year. "Tracy thinks only about what she has to do to win," says her dad. "She never thinks of what her opponent will do. It is impossible to psych her out."
Those steely nerves have turned Tracy into a bit of a stoic. "My coach told me once I never showed excitement," she says. "I told him I did too: I smiled." Tracy adds, "When I win, it is a good feeling mentally. But showing it kind of embarrasses me." When she loses (not often), she simply practices harder. "She doesn't cry," says her mother, a junior high arts teacher. "She did once—when she didn't do her best and knew it."
Besides willpower, Tracy has a high pain threshold. She rarely complains about aching muscles after a hard practice or a close race. She has her teeth drilled without Novocain. "She doesn't feel pain like other people," says Mrs. Caulkins. "We have to watch her eyes and take her temperature if we think she's getting sick." Last fall Tracy broke her right leg in a freak accident on a swing but continued to swim, dragging her leg in a fiberglass cast. The net result was stronger shoulders and arms.
Tracy takes five weeks off the school year to swim but still manages a B-plus average at an all-girl academy in Nashville. (Her long-range plans center on a career in sports medicine.) While Tom Caulkins is delighted by Tracy's speed in the water, he is gratified she lets up on Sunday afternoons. That's when she has her driving lesson in the church parking lot. Her instructor sits in the passenger seat and tells her to take it easy—like any normal father.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
