Thank Eric for the memory

 SYDNEY -- The crowd at the Sydney International Aquatic Centre came to its feet as the swimmer hit the final 10 metres, sensing they were seeing something special, something memorable, something so very Olympic.

 The fatigue was clearly there on the swimmer's face in the final seconds of his 100m freestyle heat and he touched the wall with one last, desperate lurch and the crowd exploded.

 They had seen another world record, but not one that will live in the books, but in the hearts of many who were there to see it.

 When 22-year-old Eric Moussambani of Equitorial Guinea, on the west coast of Africa, pulled himself out of the pool, the clock read one minute, 52.72 seconds.

 That was more than a minute slower than the qualifiers for the 100m final and 50 seconds slower than the next slowest man in the field.

 Hey, what do you want from a guy who started swimming in January, had just swam 100m for the first time in his life and was swimming alone in the pool in front of a big crowd after his two fellow competitors had been disqualified for false starts?

 While the other swimmers were outfitted in FastSkin body suits, Moussambani wore a terrycloth brief, the white draw strings hanging out over the waistband.  Not to mention he was given a pair of goggles only moments before the start of his race.  In fact, Eric had never seen a 50 meter pool until that morning when he walked out on the Sydney International Aquatic Centre’s pool deck.  

 Watching him lurch towards the finish, arms and water flying, you were comforted in the knowledge the best swimmers in the world were in the building and could jump in and save him if need be.

Moussambani only started swimming in January in the little 20-metre pool with no lanes a kilometre from his house, a little pool whose custodians won't let him in unless he's accompanied by the president of the country's swim federation.

 The janitors are probably afraid he'd drown if left on his own.

 After the two other swimmers in Moussambani's heat were disqualified, he said he thought about quitting himself rather than swim solo in front of the big crowd.

 But he kept going.

 "I never saw a crowd like that," he said, "I was a little scared. There is no crowd like that in my country. After 50 metres, I wanted to quit. My arms were tired.

 "But I couldn't stop. The crowd. Thanks to the crowd, I had the strength to finish. The crowd gave me power."

Moussambani said he spoke to his mother, Lucia Malonga, on the phone earlier Wednesday. Before the swim, she knew nothing about it. Afterward, the phone rang constantly with news crews seeking her son's story.

"I didn't know why he was going to those games," she said from her Malabo home. "My boy went to training -- I think that's what they called it -- every day.

"He would come home all cold and stuffy every day, but he wouldn't leave it. He got more and more interested in swimming. That was good because he already quit soccer, then he quit basketball. Then he started to run and he quit that, too."

Malonga said her son, the oldest of five children, was an unlikely candidate for an Olympic swimming team.

"He didn't use to really care for swimming except for on the beach a bit," she said. "I thought he mostly wanted to see Sydney."

 Van den Hoogenband and Thorpe and Moussambani wouldn't seem to have much in common except they get wet, but Moussambani brought the people in the Aquatic Centre to their feet, just as they had for The Flying Dutchman and Thorpedo.

 He gave them something the stars couldn't.

 Sometimes the race is its own reward.

 Sometimes it isn't about being the best or the fastest.

 Sometimes the Olympics is about an Eric Moussambani finding a way, not to win, but just to finish.