"I like my wine, I like my butter," says the long-armed, milkmaid-pretty Natalie Coughlin — as if her life as the greatest American female swimmer of all time were mostly about sensory pleasure. More precisely, as she sips lemonade over lunch in a San Francisco suburb, she's talking about the city's farmers' market. "Hog Island Oyster Company?" she says, grinning wide with her big, perfect teeth. "I'm completely obsessed with that. Alice Waters, too — I mean totally obsessed."
It's not as if she isn't obsessed with swimming too. Coughlin is an odds-on favorite for multiple golds at the Beijing Olympics and, for the sheer range of events she dominates, is one of the most versatile swimmers ever — male or female. During her freshman year alone at swimming powerhouse U.C. Berkeley, Coughlin won five national titles, broke two American records, and took gold at the 2001 World Championships. A shoulder injury kept her out of the Sydney Olympics, but she continued to rack up school and national records until the 2004 Olympics in Athens, from which she returned with the most impressive medal haul of any American woman swimmer yet — two gold, two silver, and one bronze. She currently holds five world records and is the first woman to break a minute in the 100-meter backstroke. (She went on to break her own world record in the event twice, most recently in mid-February.)
Observers generally credit Coughlin with a near-supernatural feel for the water, which she demonstrated during a recent morning workout by slipping underwater, straightening her body over the bottom of the U.C. Berkeley pool, starting her flutter kick from a dead stop, and submarining faster than most people can freestyle on the water's surface.
Coughlin dismisses the water-feel business as something every elite swimmer shares — although she hurts her case by waving a fine-boned hand through the air, simulating her swim-stroke with a hypnotic smoothness. The only talent she'll cop to is responding well to coaching — along with knowing how to focus during a workout. "Almost like OCD," she says, laughing, "I can focus on my whole body for two hours, just constantly going up and down and evaluating what is going on."
After Athens, Coughlin flew home to a measure of celebrity almost unheard-of for a swimmer: Flight attendants announced her presence on planes, large crowds ogled her at baggage claim, and there was the obligatory appearance on Letterman. But the more she talks about her life — about spending a few hours a day in the pool, walking her dog, and cooking elaborate meals for her boyfriend (a former collegiate swimmer) — the more that life sounds borderline normal, though with more Pilates and a lot of peeing in paper cups for the omnipresent drug testers.
Beijing, however, should be Coughlin's greatest challenge yet. It's not just because she'll face her first serious competition in the backstroke in the form of France's Laure Manaudou and Zimbabwe's Kirsty Coventry; it's also because Beijing restaurants are famous for their quick-fried mutton tripe.
