(3 of 3)
Living in Moscow helps. Life is simple there, with the sweet smell of wheat fields and the muted bustle of a small college town to lull the senses--and with, in theory, little to distract O'Brien, who suffers from attention-deficit disorder. His girlfriend of three years, Leilani Sing, 23, a former Miss Klamath County who teaches scuba diving, moved in with him in the early summer, and the two spend their spare time watching videos in the spacious home he built last year. Still, easygoing, accessible and sociable, O'Brien cannot help offering a piece of himself to all who come calling. His lawyer needs to talk to him about a Xerox deal and how to get tickets to the Games. A radio station wants to interview him, as does a reporter working on a story about O'Brien's mom. His coaches, in the manner of tough-talking coaches everywhere, like to grumble about all the extra hurdles. As Sloan says when O'Brien blames a radio interview for his late arrival at Washington State University's weight room, and then stops for a chat with every other jock in the joint, "No one's gonna want to talk to his ass if he wins a silver."
This overlooks, however, the grindingly hard work that O'Brien has put in over the years to perfect not his sport, but his 10 sports. There is, of course, the physical labor--the hours of running, jumping, throwing, hurdling each day that have helped him evolve, his coaches agree, from an athlete who needed to be told what to do into an athlete who not only does it but takes deep pleasure in it. "You run until you almost throw up three or four times a week, but you're outside, you're competing," he explains. "And you get into this feeling that you could just run forever. You feel like a superman sometimes."
Just as satisfying is the mental labor. A couple of years out of college he visited a sports psychologist to talk about his training. But the sessions turned into something more: discussions about how to integrate Dan O'Brien the athlete with Dan O'Brien the person. "It was really, really interesting for me," he says now. "I was happy practicing, but I wasn't happy all the time. I kept wondering what would it be like if I was just a normal person, if I had a normal job." Now, he says, he no longer wonders. The "world's greatest athlete" realizes there is nothing for him to do but keep competing until his body betrays him. The key, O'Brien has learned, is the number one, as in "one day at a time, one event at a time, one throw at a time, one jump at a time." And when the past, present and future converge at Centennial Olympic Stadium, one gold medal for all time.