Anthony Ervin's swimming education began with childhood lessons and a team he joined at eight. At the Canyons Swim Club in Santa Clarita, California, he worked with coach Bruce Patnos. Hart High School offered another team setting before he moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where Nort Thornton and Mike Bottom coached him.
The international results came quickly. At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Ervin and training partner Gary Hall Jr. finished in a dead heat in the men's 50-meter freestyle, sharing the gold medal. He also helped the United States win relay silver. In 2001, he won world titles in both the 50- and 100-meter freestyle.
Ervin identifies as African American and has resisted expectations that he represent everyone's experience.
He stepped away from competitive swimming in 2003. He returned in 2011 and qualified for the London Olympics in 2012, eight years after leaving the sport. Cal's Olympic roster records the interruption as well as the return.
By the Rio Olympics in 2016, Ervin was 35. He won the 50-meter freestyle in 21.40 seconds, finishing one hundredth of a second ahead of France's Florent Manaudou. Cal's contemporary report identified him as the oldest swimmer to win an individual Olympic gold medal, a mark reached sixteen years after Sydney.
His other Rio gold came through a team event. He swam in the preliminary round of the men's 4-by-100-meter freestyle relay and earned a medal when the United States won the final.
Ervin also gave his first Olympic medal another purpose. He sold it to raise more than $17,000 for tsunami relief in Indonesia, according to Cal's account. In April 2016, he and Constantine Markides published *Chasing Water: Elegy of an Olympian*, a shared account of his life in and out of the pool.
