American Maya DiRado swims in the 200 meter individual medley final Tuesday night in Rio with one Olympic silver medal already tucked inside her proverbial Speedo.
But that’s not what’s got much of the world’s press going gaga for the 23-year-old California native.
In a word, it’s Atlanta.
OK, so that’s two words. Consider it a DiRado-esque case of overachievement. After all, the buoyant Brainiac skipped the second grade, entered high school at age 13 and Stanford University at 17. In between, she got a perfect score on the math portion of the SAT’s.
Even when she finally made the powerhouse U.S. Olympic swim team this summer after just missing out in 2008 and 2012, she overachieved: She finished first in not one, but three individual events, including the 200 backstroke, where she merely beat the defending Olympic champion, Missy Franklin.
On Saturday night in Rio, DiRado won a silver medal in the grueling 400 IM behind world record holder Katinka Hosszu of Hungary. They'll face off again in Tuesday's 200 IM, where Hosszu and DiRado qualified with the second and third best times respectively.
Whatever happens in the Olympic pool, DiRado's unwavering about what comes next for her: After a post-Games trip to Paris with Rob Andrews, her husband of a year (and a fellow Stanford grad and former swimmer), she'll start working as a business analyst in the Atlanta office of global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company (No word on whether her commute will involve swimming in the Chattahoochee).
The decision to hang up her goggles and swim cap for good at a time when she’s finding such success has startled many people. During live coverage of the 200 IM heats and semifinals on Monday, NBC’s announcers kept repeating that DiRado and Andrews had recently closed on a house in Atlanta – as if trying to convince themselves this all really is happening.
It is.
“Some people see it as, ‘Oh, you’re swimming so well, so why not keep going?’ ” DiRado told the Washington Post. “But I think part of the reason why I am swimming so well is knowing that I have a hard stop date, and so it’s much easier to be excited about all of this and give it everything I have when I know that this is my last go-through.”
At McKinsey, they’re waiting for her – and watching with maybe even a little more rooting interest than the rest of us.
“We are very excited for Maya’s achievement in winning the silver medal and wish her the best in tonight’s 200 IM final,” DJ Carella, McKinsey’s deputy head of media relations wrote in an email Tuesday. “Many of her future colleagues have been following Maya’s races in Rio and we have been keeping folks around the firm up to date on her results.”
DiRado’s race is scheduled for 10:29 p.m. Atlanta time on Tuesday.
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