ANTHONY ERVIN has beaten the odds to become the oldest-ever swimmer to win Olympic gold.
The 35-year-old American – a practising Zen Buddhist – narrowly took first in the 50m freestyle by an incredible one hundredth of a second, 16 years after winning the same event in Sydney.
Ervin – who used to work in a tattoo parlour and also played in a band – pipped France’s Florent Manaudou and compatriot Nathan Adrian to top spot, and revealed the whole scenario felt like a dream.
He said: “I kind of laughed. It’s almost absurd I was able to do it again.”
It spells a remarkable turnaround for Ervin, who famously went off the rails after his gold triumph in Sydney and quit the sport in 2003.
The swimmer – who sold his first gold medal for $17,000 to aid relief for the 2004 tsunami – struggled with alcoholism before a failed suicide attempt helped him regain his focus in the pool, and Ervin admits he was in a dark place before fighting back to become top dog again.
He told The Times: “I was in a state of rebellion. As soon as something appears before me that seems like its sole purpose is to control me, I will fight it, and for a while that was the pool.
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“I felt very alone and isolated, a man atop a mountain who couldn’t receive help from other people. I felt like they didn’t understand.
“That loneliness became a dark well into which I plunged deeper and deeper until I no longer recognised who I thought I was and how I was seen by other people, the value that was being posited on my through a thing such as athletic prowess.
“It just seemed so pointless that that seemed to be what my existence was, so I just wanted to hit reset.
“In one way, the suicide worked. A part of me that I didn’t want any more did die, and what was left was a state of being reborn. Before, I couldn’t move, I had become chained to the idea of who I was, shackled to the point of paralysis; and afterwards I was free.”
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