A Day to Remember

Olympic medalist Brooke Forde transitions beyond swimming

10/27/2021

THE FOG ROLLS through the Golden Gate in summer and the waves rise higher and crash harder along the coast in winter, but the seasons in the San Francisco Bay Area largely melt together without much distinction. 

Still, there are days too unique to forget. One was Feb. 5, 1976, the day it snowed. Snowball fights on Ocean Beach, skiing down Redwood City’s Emerald Hills, a snowman in front of Memorial Church. The world never seemed so carefree.

On Oct. 17, 1989, the Loma Prieta Earthquake came without warning. A double-decker freeway collapsed in Oakland, the Bay Bridge buckled, the Marina burned, and Candlestick Park rattled. The world never seemed so vulnerable. 

Sept. 9, 2020 … that was the Orange Day. Smoke from an unprecedented wildfire season combined with fog to block natural light but for an omnipresent orange glow. Streetlights remained on during a summer day submerged in darkness. The world never seemed so surreal.

Stanford student Brooke Forde woke in shock and disgust that morning. Recent swim workouts had been canceled because of poor air quality from fires throughout the state, but more than that, she was angered that the environmental catastrophe she was witnessing was not prevented.  

Public outrage is not Forde’s forte. She has her thoughts and opinions and a fierce competitive streak. But she’s also the person who will rescue a bee clinging on a floating lane line when others splash away for fear of being stung. In other words, Forde feels for the helpless and those hurt by society’s negligence. As a world-class swimmer, Forde had a platform to express her thoughts to an audience that would listen, but she wasn’t fully comfortable doing so. But the glow never dissipated and the darkness never lifted. 

“It felt like the end of the world,” Forde said.

She had to say something.

Brooke found her way to the silent Avery Aquatic Center and pointed the lens of her phone across the water, past multi-colored plastic flags dulled by the orange ooze, and snapped a photo of the apocalyptic scene.

She opened Instagram, placed the photo on the screen and added a caption: 

“Rant warning …” her 300-word post began. “I’m not ok with having this view at afternoon practice … Every calamitous event this year, including COVID-19, has been caused or exacerbated by global climate change … There will be many more years that look like 2020 if we don’t change our course.”

She suggested ways we could fight climate change in our everyday lives and, for those interested in the basis for her arguments, Forde offered to send research and links through direct messages. 

“The world is giving us overt warning signs right now -- please don’t ignore them!” she wrote. 

Satisfied that she said her piece, Forde waited for comments to roll in.

“Truth,” said the first. “Amen,” said another. 

Others were not so kind. 

“Just keep swimming,” said one. “The only thing that was even remotely close to being right was the first point … Everything else you said was literally dumb,” said another.

“Haha climate change! Good one! Fires started by people is climate change! Haha!”

Forde expected pushback before sifting through 122 comments, but not the volume or the intensity. 

“I was a little surprised by the number of comments of people who denied that climate change even exists,” she said. “I feel we’re past that point, you know?” 

Forde anticipated 10 likes. She got 6,541

About 40 took Brooke up on her offer for more information. Having just completed HUMBIO 114: “Global Change and Emerging Infectious Disease,” a class taught by James Jones that analyzed connections between climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, Forde was excited to share what she learned and responded to each request.

“I don’t know if they actually took the time to read it or just took my word for it, but I feel like I accomplished what I wanted,” she said. “There are a lot of people out there who don’t get the chance to take classes about something like climate change and epidemics. I felt like that was a small but worthwhile accomplishment.”

That post was “a turning point” she said, in finding her voice. Since then, Brooke has not stood passively by. She is co-president of the Stanford Student-Athlete Sustainability Committee and helped launch a similar initiative throughout the Pac-12 Conference.  

“Brooke is super passionate about climate change and the environment,” said Stanford sustainability co-president and field hockey senior Isabelle Pilson. “Honestly, I aspire to be like Brooke in so many ways. She just navigates the world with such grace.”

For a swimmer of her caliber, it’s natural for Brooke to be identified by her sport. She is an Olympic medalist, the 11th-fastest American ever in the 400-meter individual medley, a four-time NCAA individual and relay champion, a 15-time All-American, and an Academic All-American. 

Now Forde, a fifth-year senior, is in the midst of her final swimming season, one devoid of the Olympic pressure that has loomed in recent years. The companionship of teammates after a hard practice, the common goals … this is the way Forde wanted to end her swimming career -- appreciating every minute of it.  

THERE IS A dogwood tree in the backyard of the Forde home in Louisville, Kentucky. It blooms each spring before the leaves emerge from the winter. Brooke’s mother, Tricia, a school administrator, takes photos and sends them to Brooke in California. 

“She loves the dogwoods,” Tricia said. “That’s one thing she misses from home.”

Some of Brooke’s earliest memories come from a plot of land on a hillside that the family purchased in Nelson County, Kentucky. There were no buildings, just a clearing to pitch a tent and a pond to fish in. 

Other campers left trash or threw garbage in the water. “It boggles your mind,” Tricia said. Mother and daughter took to carrying garbage bags on hikes. 

The family sold that property and bought another, with a rustic cabin near a small lake. The Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest with its oaks, redbuds, and dogwoods, and even a collection of large wooden-carved creatures called “forest giants” among the trees, is a hiking destination. 

“Our family’s always been cognizant of the environment,” Tricia said. “We’re outdoors people and always emphasized our role in caring for it. That’s something always present in our home.”

Weekends in the country became harder to come by as swimming commanded more of their time. Brooke liked to emulate her older brothers Clayton and Mitchell, and tried to keep up them. Like Tricia, who swam at Northwestern, Clayton and Mitchell also would compete in college, at Georgia and Missouri, respectively.

Brooke was a phenom with Louisville’s Lakeside SeaHawks, setting her first state record at age 8 and reaching No. 1 in the nation in the 50-meter butterfly by age 9. State records, national teams, international meets, Forde was a rising star and already down the path of swimming’s elite. 

“One thing that makes it hard is the expectation that the Olympics should be your goal,” Forde said. “It’s a goal that gets imposed upon you. People just expect that you’re going to the Olympics because there really isn’t any other higher level in swimming. There’s nothing else to shoot for.”

As a freshman, Forde told Greg Meehan, Stanford’s Paul A. Violich Director of Women's Swimming and U.S. women’s Olympic team coach, that she did not want to feel as though she was training for the Olympics. That pressure would come later. 

“I didn’t want that hanging over me,” she said. “I said, ‘All right Greg, you can train me for the Olympics, but don’t tell me that’s what you’re doing.’” 

It wasn’t until the 2020 postponement that Brooke admitted to herself that the Olympics were important, because the disappointment was so real. 

Brooke was ready for Tokyo. She was second in the 400 IM at both the 2018 and 2019 long-course nationals, and in position for a top-two finish at the Olympic Trials and a spot on the U.S. team. 

“She had had her sights focused on 2020 for so long that when it got postponed, it wasn’t just a matter of, I’ll just keep training for another year,” Tricia said. “It was this whole up-ending of everything she had been focused on.”

Training during the lockdown was inconsistent and unreliable. Brooke was at home for a while, then training at a relative’s condo complex in Florida, back to Louisville, then back to Palo Alto, where she was required to find off-campus housing. 

Complicating matters, Brooke tested positive for COVID-19 and was forced into quarantine. When she resumed training alongside Katie Ledecky and Simone Manuel with Meehan’s pro training group, Forde was hampered by shoulder issues. Her training splits were too slow, her confidence wavered, and the single mindedness of training for a brutal event was mentally draining. She began to loathe the 400 IM. 

“Is this really worth it?” she asked herself. 

Anxiety was building and there was no outlet. Life in a pandemic meant total immersion in limited areas. For Brooke, it was all swimming.  

“I think we all picked up on it,” Meehan said. “More than any other event I’ve ever coached over the years, it’ll mess with people’s heads.”

ON MARCH 5, 2021, three months before the Olympic Trials, Forde stood on the blocks for the 400 IM at the Pro Swim Series long-course meet in San Antonio, Texas.

In front of an arena empty of spectators because of the pandemic, Forde began poorly and struggled. Her father, Pat, a sportswriter, and Tricia watched on television until Brooke disappeared from the screen, and they didn’t know why. 

The reality was, Brooke was engulfed in a panic attack in the water, and feared for her safety.    

“It felt physical,” she said, “like I physically can’t finish this race anymore. I really didn’t feel like I was going to make it.”

She dropped out. 

“It was just … pressure, both internal and external,” she said. “To get halfway through that race, feel terrible, and know that there’s another half left and know that you’re not doing well … it’s really hard to push past. It’s a long race so there’s a lot of time for self-talk. It starts to get in your head.”

Still confused, Pat received a text from Meehan. “I just wanted you to know Brooke’s OK,” he wrote. “I will call you later.”

Brooke exited the pool and told Meehan she was done. 

“I don’t want to go to the Olympic Trials,” she said. “I don’t want to swim this race ever again. I really don’t even care at this point.”

In retrospect, Forde said, “I missed a lot of signs along the way that I was not managing that stress very well. I wasn’t taking very great care of my mental health when it came to swimming, because I’d never really been through an experience like that before. I didn’t really know what I should be looking for or what I should do.”

Deep down, Forde knew she wasn’t ready to give up on the Olympic dream. Meehan insisted that Forde continue with the 400 IM through the Olympic Trials and Forde reluctantly agreed to do so. With help from a sports psychologist, Forde won the short-course 400 IM at the NCAA Championships in a pool-record time in Greensboro, North Carolina, and completed a long-course 400 IM at the TYR Pro Swim Series meet in Mission Viejo in April. Another big step. 

“Once she got through that, it was a little bit of relief,” Meehan said. “It didn’t solve all the problems, but at least, you can do this.”

Forde no longer had allusions of making a run to Tokyo, at least in the 400 IM, her best event. 

“I worked on everything for a few weeks and got to the point where I could swim that race again,” Forde said. “But it was not something I enjoyed at all. It was more something that I was trying to get through. I swam it at the Olympic Trials just to prove to myself that I could do it.”

In the morning prelims, Forde eked out the final qualifying spot for the 400 IM final, where she placed a respectable sixth, recording her best time in two years. It wasn’t the ticket to Tokyo that she once hoped for, but “I felt really proud after that race. I overcame some challenges and did the best that I could.”

When Forde emerged from the pool, Meehan could see the relief in her face. 

“This is the biggest I’ve seen you smile in a long time,” he said. 

Forde felt a burden lifted from her, and the extended Trials schedule allowed her an opportunity to swim again, this time in one of her favorite events, the 200 free. In training, she kept up with Ledecky and Manuel during 200-meter sets and took a great deal of joy and confidence into that race despite being seeded only 15th.  

A personal-best time moved her into the final, which brought renewed motivation. Because this was a relay event, the top six were eligible to make the U.S. team, and that’s where she finished, in sixth. Despite some late drama to determine the final spots on the U.S. team, which had to cap its roster at 26, Forde finally was an Olympian. 

In Tokyo, she won a silver medal as part of the 4x200-meter free relay team that earned a spot in the final. Swimming the anchor, Forde finished off the team effort that got the U.S. the No. 2 seed. Though Forde’s job was done in the semis -- Ledecky replaced Brooke in the final -- she earned a medal when her teammates took second to China with the top three teams breaking the previous world record. 

“Brooke Forde, Olympian, was now Brooke Forde, silver medalist,” wrote her father in Sports Illustrated. “Like, for real. All the work, all the so-called small moments, had yielded this moment too big to dare believe it could happen.”

“I FELT, A lot of the time, you had to have this attitude of, I’m going to make the Olympics and everything else is failure,” Brooke said. “That’s generally the attitude that Olympians have.”

Brooke never embraced that notion and certainly doesn’t now. After all, this is the first year of the rest of her life. She’s completing coterm requirements in human biology (undergrad), and epidemiology and population health (master’s). She’s finalizing a thesis on the study of anemia in low- and middle-income countries. And she’s applied for the Peace Corps, seeking a year in the Andes or Amazon of rural Peru, and taking advantage of her Spanish minor. 

Her interests in global health, climate change, epidemiology, and marginalized societies, all are connected. As much as climate change impacts those at Stanford, it is far more devastating to those on the margins. If Forde can understand first-hand what those societies experience, she’ll be in a better place to make a difference on a global scale. 

“Brooke brings a steely determination to epidemiology,” wrote her advisor, Dr. Stephen Luby, a professor of medicine specializing in infectious diseases, in an e-mail. “Even as an undergraduate she enrolled in graduate level courses, worked hard and thrived.

“Brooke is interested in generating knowledge that will benefit the poor communities in poor countries. I see this commitment as arising from her core values. Effort in this area can work to generate new knowledge that can improve the health of communities.”

With the Stanford sustainability committee, Forde spearheaded a Zero Waste initiative at the football game against Washington on Oct. 30, with recycling, e-waste, and donation drives that will be duplicated during basketball season. She brainstorms, solicits ideas, communicates with the athletics department, speaks with leaders on campus, and is a willing participant in panel discussions. 

When the Pac-12 Team Green working group had trouble expanding representation to student-athletes from each conference campus, Forde stepped in to organize the effort, scheduled Zoom meetings, and brought the group together. 

“Her influence is all over the success we’ve had so far,” said Cheryl Wong, Pac-12 Assistant Commissioner for Sports Management and Championships. “She’s smart, organized, genuine, and passionate. She really wants her energy to make an impact to change things for the better.”

In describing Brooke, “swimmer” may be far down the list. She’ll always be an Olympic medalist, an accomplishment that illustrates a victory in a personal battle as much as a triumph in the water. 

Until March 19, 2022, the final day of the NCAA Championships, she’s still a competitive swimmer. When that day comes, it will mark the end of one journey and the beginning of another. 

It will be just one more day to remember, along with others that signaled changes in her life. Like one September day, bathed in orange.