Solo, Hope Solo [best non fiction books of all time .txt] 📗

I had also placed a giant plastic gold medal—a ridiculous made-in-China prop that my mom and I had found in a Beijing marketplace. I put it on and ran over to where my family sat. My mom laughed in delight at my silly medal. My grandpa had such an enormous smile. My teammates and I reached up to the stands for high-fives and hugs. Pearcie’s daughter Rylie was passed down to her. American flags were handed down, and some of my teammates ran around the stadium wrapped in them. Everyone was celebrating.

Later on, I heard some say how selfish I had been because I had ignored my teammates in order to talk on my phone and prance around with a tacky fake medal. That I was still a “Solo act.” I was far beyond caring who judged how I celebrated something I had worked for my entire life. Never again would I worry about what others thought.

When the podium was finally set up on the field for the medal ceremony, we put on our white jackets, specifically made for the gold medal ceremony. As we lined up to step up on the podium, Bri came up to me and nodded. “I told you that you could do it, Hope,” she said. Had she really? It didn’t matter. We hugged.

I bowed my head and felt the medal slip around my neck. I heard the anthem play, saw my Grandma with her red, white, and blue sweater and blinking HOPE NO. 1 sign pinned above her heart, singing at the top of her lungs. My grandpa was beaming with pride. My mother looked at me with so much love and amazement. They all shared this medal with me.

I thought of that moment years ago at the Sea-Tac Airport and how proud my dad had been when I won the gold medal in the Pan-American Games: he stopped strangers to tell them about how great his daughter was. I imagined how much he would have loved to see the gold medal hanging from my neck right now.

When we went back into the locker room, I stared at my medal for a very long time. I couldn’t find my gloves, which were covered with writing: my dad’s initials, words of inspiration from my grandma. I went back out to the field to look for them, but they were gone, probably snagged by some photographer looking for a souvenir.

When I came through the mixed zone on the way to the bus, there was a mob of reporters waiting for me, pressed up against the metal barricades, shouting questions about redemption and Greg Ryan and vindication. I had just won an Olympic gold medal. I wasn’t thinking about the past, not about failures or hurts and certainly not about Greg. This was my happiest moment. I was not going to let the devil steal my joy.

“How,” someone asked, “does the moment feel?”

“It’s unreal to me,” I said. “It’s like a storybook ending. It’s something you see in Hollywood, a fairy tale, and yet it was playing out. And my life doesn’t play out that way all the time, you know? There have been a lot of hardships. I was just hoping this one time it would really come through. But honestly, that was wishful thinking. I knew it was a long road, a long journey. And I knew it was too perfect an ending to actually happen. Nothing ever goes right with my family and my life, so this was too perfect.”

II.

As I’ve said many times: I don’t believe in happy endings. I’m not a bitter cynic, just a realist bracing for whatever life delivers next. People who believe in happily ever after, who hadn’t been dealt hardships and heartbreaks, always seemed a little naïve to me. But I have to admit that those hours after winning the Olympics were pretty damn sweet. When I was interviewed by ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap several hours after the game, I told him, “For the first time in my life, I can say that I’m genuinely joyful and happy.”

After the game, we went to the U.S. Soccer House in Beijing and celebrated with friends and family. Dan Flynn told us how proud he was of us. Pia spoke about the incredible journey we’d been on. Every time Carli and I made eye contact, we laughed and laughed.

It was so late, but no one wanted our gold-medal night to end. I jumped in a cab with Pia and some others, and we headed to a bar. Most of my teammates were too exhausted to go out, but a few of us partied and danced through the night.

At one point, Pia came up to me and said, “Why don’t the coaches get a gold medal too?”

I agreed that it didn’t seem fair. “Here you go, Pia,” I said, slipping my medal over her silver hair. “You wear mine tonight.”

I wanted to share this victory with her. I wanted to share it with the world.

III.

A few days after I got home, Jesse and I rented a Winnebago and headed to the Gorge Amphitheater on the Columbia River—just a hundred miles away from Richland—for a three-day Dave Matthews concert that we dubbed our Gold Medal Celebration Tour. Sofia Palmqvist flew in to celebrate with me, and other friends came from Richland and Seattle. We decorated the RV in Olympic rings. We brought our mountain bikes and cruised around, partying too hard.

Some Olympians stick their gold medals in a safe deposit box as soon as they get home. Not me. Before we left for the games, I made a bet with my friends that if we won, I’d wear mine at the gorge with my swimsuit. That’s what I did. I wore it while we played drinking games, and I wore it everywhere I went until the ribbon began to fray. I was proud of being an eastern Washington girl with a gold medal around my dusty neck.

Two weeks after I got home,