英语泛读教程（高等教育出版社）

A girl athlete named Tobi worked very hard and became the best sportswoman in her team. But one day Brady came and joined the team. Brady could swim better than Tobi. What did Tobi do in the new situation? How would she overcome her jealousy and restore confidence in herself?

I hadn't even seen her swim yet, but the whole team knew she had been swimming for a famous club in California. We were just a small city team, only two years old. But we had a coach whose middle name was motivation. He'd motivated me into swimming three miles a day, and now I was actually in the running to compete at the Nationals. Or I was until Angela showed up.

"Okay, girls, hit the water for an 800 meter freestyle warm-up!" barked Coach. Then he added in a more human voice, "Angela, why don't you try lane four today?"

Lane four was the fast lane, my lane. I'd had to earn my place in that lane by swimming 400 meters in less than five minutes. Now all Angela had to do was jump in. It wasn't fair.

At the end of the 800, I glanced up and saw Coach staring at me. Realizing that he had seen me refuse to let Angela pass, I took a deep breath and ducked underwater.

When the workout was over, everyone crowded around Angela, asking her if she knew any Olympic swimmers and stuff like that. I hurried toward my bike.

It was like that for the next two weeks. During time trials Angela beat me and took my place as lane leader.

I was miserable. And I was scared, too; scared that Angela was taking away my chance at the Nationals, a chance I had earned by a lot of hard work.

I started to show up late so that I wouldn't have to talk to anyone. I even walked on the bottom of the pool and faked my stroke, a swimmer's cheating trick I'd never used before. It was easy to catch up to Angela that way.

I'll admit I wasn't very happy with my actions. But my jealous feelings were like a current I couldn't swim against.

"Okay, sportswomanship," he said, taking me seriously. "Or whatever you want to call it when one athlete accepts a better athlete in a spirit of friendly competition."

"Maybe the so-called better athlete is not as good as everyone thinks," I mumbled.

"Let's stop talking about this athlete and that athlete," he said softly, "and talk instead about Tobi and Angela. She has made better time than you, Tobi. And that is an objective fact, not something everyone thinks."

"The worst of it, Tobi, is that your attitude is hurting your performance. Do you know that your times have become worse in the last two weeks? Maybe showing up late and walking on the bottom have something to do with that," he said. My face felt as if it had been splashed with hot pink paint.

"Do you have anything you want to say?" he asked. I shook my head. "That's all then, Tobi. I'll see you tomorrow at the Riverdale Meet."

The next morning I was too nervous to eat my special breakfast of steak and eggs. This meet would decide who was going to Nationals.

The early skies were still gray when I arrived at the Riverdale pool for the warm-up session. The other swimmers were screeching greetings at each other like a flock of gulls. I jumped into the water to cut off the sound and mechanically began my stroke.
Half an hour later, the meet was about to start. I quickly searched the heat sheet for my name. Disappointed, I saw that I had just missed making it into the last, and fastest, qualifying heat. Angela's name, of course, was there. She'd taken my place just as she had at the trials.

Better not to think about Angela at all, I told myself, recalling Coach's words. Better to concentrate on my own race. Carefully, I went over Coach's instructions in my mind, shutting out the crowd around me, swimming my race perfectly, over and over again in my head, always perfectly.

Without looking I knew whose voice it was. "It's good for quick energy," continued Angela, holding the orange out to me.

"No thanks," I said. "I've got all I need." I saw that she was about to sit down next to me, so I added, "I don't like to talk before a race."

She nodded sympathetically. "I get uptight, too. The butterflies are free," she said with a nervous laugh.

For a moment I felt a little better toward her, knowing that she was nervous, too. Then I remembered that she didn't have to worry.

My heat was called. Up on the blocks I willed my muscles into obedience, alert for the starter's commands. At the gun, I cut into the top of the water smoothly.

I swam exactly as I had been imagining it before the race, acting out the pictures in my mind. I felt the water stream past me, smooth, steady and swift. When I finished, I was certain I had done my best in that heat.

Exhausted, I sat on the deck for several minutes, eyes closed, totally spent. I knew I was missing Angela's heat, but I was too tired to care.

I also heard Angela's name, but it was several minutes before I realized that my name had been called last. That meant my time had been better.

Heading for the gym, where all the swimmers rest and wait for the heats to be called, I saw Angela sitting with her back against the wall alone. Her shoulders were rounded in a slump.

It could be me, I whispered to myself. There's no worse anger than the kind you feel toward yourself when you've ruined something you care about. I knew how she felt, and I also knew there was no way I could make up for the way I had acted. But I just had to try.
"I don't talk before races, but I do talk after them. Sometimes it helps," I said, knowing Angela had every right to tell me to go drown myself.

She hesitated, and I saw her trying to swallow. "I will as soon as I'm sure I'm not going to cry," she whispered.

So I babbled on for a few minutes about the meet, some of the other swimmers, the team standings, anything. I knew it didn't matter what I said as long as I kept talking.

All at once, Angela interrupted me. "I do this all the time," she burst out. "I do great at workouts, then comes a meet, and something happens; I just can't do it."

"I don't exactly." She was twisting the ends of the towel. "I just try to block it out, not think about it."

"Well, take my positive approach. First, I think about all the good things I've done in previous race. Then I plan my upcoming race carefully, going over each detail in my mind, picturing myself the perfect swimmer. Then when I'm in the water, I tell myself to do it again, only this time for real."

"And you win," Angela added with a smile. Now I really felt badly, remembering how I had acted when Angela had done better than I in workouts.

"Listen, I have an idea," I said. Maybe I could make it up to her. "You swim faster than me, right?" Angela looked doubtful.

"Yes, you do, that's an objective fact," I insisted. "Now my idea is that you use me as a pacer in the backstroke final this afternoon."

At first Angela wasn't sure, but I soon had her convinced, and we were planning our strategy when Coach showed up.

"We've got it all settled," Angela spoke up. "Tobi and I are going to be a team from now on."

As Angela and I sat together on the ready bench, I had conflicting thoughts about helping her. What was I doing anyway? Handing her my relay position on a silver platter, that's what.

I hadn't time to get worked up over it, though, because the whistle blew, and we stepped up to the blocks. At the sound of the gun I was into the water with barely a splash, skimming the surface like a water bug.

As I reached the wall, I pretended all my strength was in my legs as I flipped and pushed off. Pull hard, hard, hard, I told myself, muscles aching from the effort. Then on the last lap, I concentrated on a single word. Win! I shot through the water and strained for the finish.

Immediately, I looked to Angela's lane. She was there, but it was too close to tell who had won. She gave me the thumbs up sign, and I returned it.

I stared at the electronic scoreboard. Usually it didn't take long for the times to appear, but now it remained blank for so long I was beginning to worry that a fuse had blown.

Please, please let me be the winner, I whispered over and over. Finally, the winning times flashed on. Angela had won. I managed to give her a congratulatory hug.

"You did it, girls!" Coach couldn't keep himself from shouting, he was so excited. "You've just raced yourself to the Nationals!"

I had never felt so left out, so disappointed in my whole life. "Well, at least Angela has," I said, struggling to smile.

"That's right, but you missed something. You both swam so fast that you made qualifying times for the individual backstroke event!"

I was stunned. I had concentrated so hard on the relay place I hadn't even thought about the individual events.

"So you'll both go to the Nationals!" Coach couldn't resist doing a couple of dance steps, and I was so ecstatic, I joined him. But a wet concrete swimming deck is not an ideal dance floor.

"Look out!" yelled Angela, as we just missed falling into the water. "I don't want my partner to break a leg. We've got a long way to go before the 1980 Olympics."