Greater Than Gold: From Olympic Heartbreak to Ultimate Redemption

by David Boudia, Tim Ellsworth

Overview

One of America’s most heralded young divers, David Boudia twice went for Olympic gold, training obsessively and whole-heartedly for success. In his first Olympics, he failed miserably, not winning a single medal. Four years later saw a different story: he mounted the podium twice, winning both gold and bronze. The difference? In the intervening years, he’d changed the focus of his quest from seeking glory for himself to giving glory to God. In Greater Than Gold, Boudia provides a behind-the-scenes access to the rarefied world of world-class athletics while also showing readers that when they place their hope in God, they receive what they’ve been seeking all along.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780718078799
Publisher:	HarperCollins Christian Publishing
Publication date:	12/19/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	193
File size:	524 KB

About the Author

David Boudia is an Olympic champion, a gold-medalist at the 2012 London Olympics and winner of multiple world championship medals. Winner of six NCAA national titles at Purdue University and winner of five medals in the 2012 FINA Diving World Series, Boudia was the first American male since 1986 to medal in the 10m platform at a World Championship. He lives with his wife and daughter in West Lafayette, IN

Read an Excerpt

Greater Than Gold

From Olympic Heartbreak to Ultimate Redemption

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By David Boudia, Tim Ellsworth

Thomas Nelson

Copyright © 2016 David Boudia
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7180-7879-9

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CHAPTER 1

BUILDING IDOLS

My first day in gymnastics, I peed all over the floor. That's what I remember most about my initial exposure to organized gymnastics in Lubbock, Texas.

We moved to Lubbock early in my childhood. My parents were both in the US Air Force and were stationed in Abilene when I was born in 1989. Shotgun marriages often don't last, but by the grace of God, my parents made their marriage work. My sisters Shaila and Shauni were already on the scene when I came along into what was a remarkably stable and happy family. This was not a home where Dad did his thing, Mom did her thing, and the kids did whatever they wanted. We were active — together — as a family.

That togetherness included going to church. I grew up as a Roman Catholic, and I remember attending church regularly, Sunday after Sunday. The priest once jokingly predicted to my mom that I would grow up to become a priest — because I fell asleep in the pew almost every week. Church wasn't really important to me as a kid, but that's what we did as a family.

The move to Lubbock when I was three allowed my father to finish engineering school. Mom was still active in the air force while we were in Lubbock, but she spent most of her time taking care of my sisters and me.

I was incredibly active as a kid, running up and down the couches, jumping off things, teaching myself how to do cartwheels, and generally bouncing off the walls. One time, I tried to use the couch as a trampoline. A Diet Coke can was sitting on an end table, and as I flipped off the couch, I landed on the soda can with my lip. That was my first taste of the hospital and stitches. It wouldn't be my last. Another time, when I was about two, I decided to try to climb up the TV and came tumbling down, with the TV landing on top of me. I'm thankful that the only thing I suffered from that incident was a sprained ankle.

At four years old I finally found an outlet for my energy when I started playing soccer on an organized team (I use the word organized loosely — it was more like organized chaos). I had taken a lot of falls in my short life, so, understandably, I think my parents were afraid I might hurt myself even worse. So they figured they might as well make sure that I was instructed properly. That's why they added gymnastics to go along with soccer.

I remember wearing a pair of little red shorts that first day. I was scared and nervous and didn't want to tell anyone that I had to go to the bathroom. So out it came, all over the floor. Thankfully, things improved from there. It so happened that I was athletically gifted as a child. By age five, I was able to do five back handsprings in a row. I don't think that was very common, and I remember other instructors pointing me out and telling others what I could do.

From my earliest years, sports were important to me both because I enjoyed competing and because I had a special ability to perform well. I had difficulty sitting still, and I can see that trait now in my daughter. One time, when she was going crazy in her high chair, my mother-in-law remarked that Sonnie, my wife, never did that when she was a baby. My mom, however, said she was all too familiar with that behavior. My dad describes me as an "enthusiastic" child whose motor was always running.

Gymnastics would remain a large part of my life for the next several years, even after we moved to a different location. After my dad graduated from Texas Tech University, he got a job in Kokomo, Indiana, as an electrical engineer. We moved to nearby Noblesville, Indiana, when I was seven years old and would remain there until I left home for college. When I think of home, I think of Noblesville.

A northern suburb of Indianapolis, Noblesville is a fairly affluent community. It's probably a lot like what most people picture when they think of suburban life. We lived in a neighborhood with lots of houses and lots of kids. We enjoyed a fairly tight community with the families we knew from our sports activities.

Some of my best friends lived across the street from us. I remember going over to their house with my dad to build my pinewood derby car for Boy Scouts. My approach to the pinewood derby was no different than my attitude toward other sports: I wanted to win. I was super competitive as a kid, and if I didn't win, I was a terrible sport. I'd throw a fit or run off crying. When I did win, I was on top of the world. Even as a child, I craved that feeling. I loved competition and wanted to be better than everyone else, especially my sister Shauni.

Shauni is only eighteen months older than I am, and she was an extremely gifted athlete as well. We've always been close friends, and we got into some trouble and did typical kid stuff together. I remember us doing things like finding a mask and a snorkel and filling up a trash can with water. We then took turns dunking each other into the trash can, learning how to use our new equipment. When we lived in an apartment for a few years, I remember the two of us going to the Dumpster to see what kind of trash we could use to build a fort.

She was my main competition for most things throughout my childhood. If I didn't beat her, then I'd end up in a wrestling match with her. We played basketball on a hoop across the street, and Shauni says we never actually finished a game because we'd always get into a fight. I threw a basketball at her one time as she walked away. She most likely returned the favor.

We made a game out of anything we could and were cutthroat in our soccer and Go Fish competitions. We went sledding on a frozen lake when I was in second or third grade. I fell into the lake, and Shauni quickly jumped in to save the sled — not me. I'm glad she loves me more than that now. Another time, we got into a scissor fight (don't ask me to explain), and I cut her finger badly enough that she had to go to the hospital to get stitches. I swear it was an accident. I'm not sure to this day that she believes me.

I had another taste of stiches myself when I was five or six, at a roller-rink birthday party. During the limbo contest, I wanted to be the one to go the lowest and beat everyone else. But I cracked my chin open when I fell forward onto the floor while trying to go under the bar. Competitive fire was a constant motivator during my younger years, and while it got me in trouble at times, it also fueled my quest for excellence.

Despite all our shenanigans, we had a remarkably structured childhood. I guess that comes naturally from having two military parents. We ate dinner together in the evenings. When we disobeyed, my parents put us in time-out. We were expected to do chores when we were told, and my mom often used the competitiveness between Shauni and me to her advantage, getting us to do the tasks that we didn't like to do. "Okay," she'd say, "let's see who can take the trash out the quickest."

A lot of my friends came from homes with far fewer guidelines. But before I could go play, I had to cut the grass or do other tasks that needed to be done. My parents had high expectations for us. I hated the restrictions at the time, but I have since come to see the wisdom and the benefit of them. My parents put guidelines in place not because they didn't like us but because they wanted what was best for us — what would keep us safe and balanced as individuals later in life.

My parents remained active in the Catholic church after we moved to Noblesville. Both my mom and my dad taught Sunday school, so the church community stayed a big part of my life. While I had a church background complete with things like Vacation Bible School and Sunday school, the teaching didn't seem to apply to the rest of my life away from the church.

Eventually, sports began to push church more and more to the periphery of my life. Sports were becoming what I lived for. Sports captured my dreams, hopes, and imagination, and thus my allegiance. I looked to sports to give my life meaning and happiness. Isn't that what we are all looking for — meaning and happiness? For me, sports seemed to be the best avenue for getting what I wanted. So sports became what I would worship and where I would place my time, energy, resources, and affections.

In one sense, this was what the Bible refers to as idolatry. For a long time when I heard the word idol, I thought of some carved statue with people bowing down before it. Or maybe I thought of someone you look up to, like a pop star. But I've learned that an idol is anything we worship that isn't God, anything that captures the affections, devotions, and desires that only God deserves. If something drives us, gives us meaning, and shapes and forms how we live, and that thing isn't God, then it's an idol. It took me a long time to figure this out, but the truth is our hearts were created to worship something. It will either be God or something else.

As I said, sports became my idol. But in another sense, they were a stepping-stone. Sports were my ticket to attaining my real idols: comfort, ease, notoriety, fame, pleasure, power, and control. These controlled my heart. I believed if I could just attain these things, they would give me the satisfaction, joy, and security that I desperately sought at my core.

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We like to describe our quest for such things as "pursuing the American dream." I bought in to that pursuit at an early age. "The American dream" sounds so much nobler than "I want more stuff," but that's what it comes down to, at least for me. We want our houses, we want our cars, we want our security. But what we ultimately want is fulfillment and happiness, and we think these things will provide them. We were built with a yearning for satisfaction, joy, and security, and that in itself isn't wrong. The problem comes when we look for these things in the wrong places.

That's why sports became such an obsession for me. They were my tool to attain what I loved. And what I loved, more than anything else, was health, wealth, and prosperity for myself. That's what drove me, and so I threw myself ever more fully into sports.

CHAPTER 2

AN OLYMPIC DREAM

I watched my first Olympics in 1996, when I was seven years old. My mom loved to watch the Olympics, and since I was competing in gymnastics at the time, I was especially interested in watching with her. In fact, the Olympics were a big deal for the whole family. Rather than watching TV shows or movies in the evening, when the Olympics came around, we gathered around the TV together to watch the games.

I can still picture the images of those Atlanta Olympics like they were yesterday. Amy Chow slipped off the balance beam and smacked her face in the process. Dominique Moceanu fell on two vaults. Kerri Strug did the same on her first vault attempt. But then, something magical happened. Strug had suffered a painful ankle injury on her first vault, hobbling off the mat. As she lined up for her second attempt, she looked at her coach, Bela Karolyi, for much-needed encouragement.

"You can do it," Karolyi told her. "You can do it. You can do it."

And Strug did, nailing her final vault to give the US women the gold medal — the first ever for the United States in the women's team competition. I'll never forget the image of Karolyi carrying Strug up to the podium and the look of joy on their faces. Because of my own involvement in gymnastics, watching the Magnificent Seven win that medal stoked my competitive fires. Competing in the Olympics became my focus, my inspiration, my dream, my god. I was going to be an Olympian. Not only that, but I was going to win — and I would revel in the fame and the celebrity it brought. And in the years that followed, I bowed at the feet of gods fashioned of gold, silver, and bronze.

From that point forward, I always perked up when I heard the Olympic theme song playing. My birthday and Christmas presents were always Olympic themed. One Christmas I received a pair of white shoes with the Olympic rings on them. They weren't cool, but I loved them.

Though I played baseball occasionally, I spent more time playing soccer. I could run really fast and was often able to take control of the field. You win in soccer by scoring the most goals, so I always wanted to be the one to score all those goals — not necessarily for the benefit of the team, but to get the glory for myself. So I could be exalted, to use an old-fashioned word.

Now, I'll stop right here because you may be thinking that sounds a little arrogant. And it was. But guess what? I'm not alone in this. If we're honest, we all crave the praise and acceptance of other people. Maybe you compare what she's wearing to your outfit. Maybe you compare his income to yours. You see? That's a desire to be exalted as well. We want to be valued and loved, and we want others to think highly of us.

Here's how it worked for me. If we lost 5-4, but I scored all four of our goals, I might be frustrated by the loss, but part of me would be happy because of how well I did. And I certainly wouldn't take any responsibility for losing. My heart would scream, "Hello, look at me! I scored all four goals!" Even now, this remains a struggle for me. I'm constantly tempted to blame others for my failures rather than accepting responsibility for myself. That's the typical human response to mistakes and screw-ups: we shift blame, we minimize, we deflect, we excuse, we hide, we justify. It's been this way since the beginning of time. We've always had trouble accepting and acknowledging that we've done something wrong. Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the serpent. And so began the trend that has persisted through human history.

When I started getting into the more advanced travel leagues, the ones that traveled longer distances to compete against other travel teams, I failed to make the A team my first year. I hated that. It bugged me to no end that I wasn't the best and was relegated instead to the B team. That only made me work harder, until I eventually played my way onto the A team. Once I got there, I never lost that spot.

Soccer was fun, but gymnastics was where I excelled, and I knew that was my ticket to the Olympics — my tool for attaining ultimate happiness and satisfaction. I'd sometimes spend five hours a day doing gymnastics, especially during the summer. My mom took a job at the gym to help pay for my lessons. We were there constantly. During the school year, I'd head to the facility for practice immediately after school and would stay until late in the evening while my mom finished up her work.

That makes it sound like I worked hard, and I often did. But I was lazy as well, often choosing to live by my feelings rather than what I should have done. If I could find a loophole to get out of the work, I'd take it. I fight against that attitude even today. I might schedule a workout, but I'll tell myself that it isn't as necessary as my coach thinks it is. So I'll slack off.

I don't think that sense of laziness is exclusive to me. It's human nature, and it's rampant in sports, believe it or not. When people say they give 110 percent, I'm not convinced they're being honest. As athletes, we too often look for ways to cut corners in our quest to excel. There's always something more we could do in our training: more mental training, eating better, sleeping more or less. But the important principle is to not live based on how we feel. Whether in athletics or any other area of life, either we can choose what is easy now and guarantee more difficult circumstances later, or we can choose to pursue the difficult now and reap the rewards later.

We started a boys' team at a gymnastics facility in Noblesville. Another boy and I quickly went through four different coaches because we were so difficult to work with. We were rebellious and didn't respect their authority. We were stubborn. We would refuse to do things our coaches told us to do if we thought they were dumb. Sounds like a dream coaching job, no?

I was proud. I was arrogant. I was self-centered. I wasn't interested in gymnastics for a legitimate reason like wanting to get the most out of the abilities God had given me. I was interested in gymnastics because I saw it as the path for my own glorification, for the accolades and praise of others. Even the Olympics, as much as I wanted to achieve that, didn't provide compelling enough motivation for me to work hard. That was too far off in the future.

My immediate motivation was the desire to win the next competition. Or sometimes it was something more short-term. If I were especially grumpy, my mom or my coach would offer me a piece of candy if I'd do four circles on "the mushroom." The mushroom is an apparatus similar to the pommel horse, which is one of the events you'll see in beginning levels of gymnastics competitions. Gymnasts use it to learn to pivot around on their hands. The mushroom is a stepping-stone to the pommel horse. I absolutely hated the mushroom, but I'd do the work for that immediate gratification of the candy.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Greater Than Gold by David Boudia, Tim Ellsworth. Copyright © 2016 David Boudia. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction, vii,
Chapter 1 Building Idols, 1,
Chapter 2 An Olympic Dream, 9,
Chapter 3 Taking a Dive, 17,
Chapter 4 The Fool and His Folly, 35,
Chapter 5 Betraying God, 49,
Chapter 6 Chaos at College, 61,
Chapter 7 Redemption, 77,
Chapter 8 Dating with a Purpose, 103,
Chapter 9 Fighting for Victory, 117,
Chapter 10 London, 127,
Chapter 11 4:6, 143,
Chapter 12 Golden Moment, 153,
Chapter 13 Pressing On, 167,
Acknowledgments, 189,
Notes, 191,
About the Authors, 193,