TORONTO -- Eight years ago this week, Chip Peterson stopped the digital timer five seconds after his friend and U.S. teammate Fran Crippen at the finish of the 10-kilometer open water swim off Copacabana Beach. They had been racing for a little more than two hours. A dozen other men were entered in the Pan American Games field, but Crippen and Peterson, a 2005 world champion in the event, were clearly the class of the bunch. Only one other swimmer finished within two minutes of them.
Peterson dried off and took his place beside Crippen to collect a silver medal in the brilliant sunshine of Rio de Janeiro. It was not the last time Peterson would stand on a championship podium, but it was the last time he would feel completely well for many years.
Within weeks of the race, Peterson learned he had ulcerative colitis. His symptoms were episodic but debilitating: abdominal pain, fever and diarrhea and blood loss so severe that he had to be put on intravenous fluids and lengthy courses of prednisone and other medications. His hospital stays kept getting longer, from three days to six to 10. No single cause for the inflammatory disease has been isolated by researchers. It attacks the immune system and is thought to have possible genetic and environmental components.
Peterson won the 2010 Pan Pacific title, an important indicator in the buildup to the London 2012 Games, then had another flare-up. In 2011, convinced he might never fully recover, he retired. "It was too heart-wrenching to come back from, only to be knocked down again," Peterson said.
Kalyn Keller Robinson, who had finished fourth in the women's Pan Am 10K held the same day in 2007, was diagnosed with a related illness: Crohn's disease. It forced her into a reluctant and emotional retirement in early 2008. She and Peterson long ago came to the same conclusion. They can't prove it, and to their knowledge, no other athlete in the race has been similarly affected, but they believe there was something in the water in Rio that day that triggered their respective ordeals.
So it is striking, to say the least, that the 27-year-old Peterson -- finally healthy after having undergone a series of three surgeries to completely remove his colon and attach the small intestine to replace it -- is pursuing a course that, if successful, could lead him back to the same venue that represents the turn buoy in his life. Both the 10K event and triathlon swim at Rio 2016 are currently scheduled to take place off Copacabana.
"It's exciting to be in a position where I'm feeling like my old self," said Peterson, a University of North Carolina graduate who still trains and does some volunteer coaching in Chapel Hill. He won a 10K World Cup race in Portugal last month and continued his comeback by capturing gold in the 10K swim at the Pan American Games on Sunday. He set the pace with 2012 Olympic bronze medalist Richard Weinberger of Canada for nearly the entire race, and tested himself by surging a little early coming into the finishing chute. The move paid off as Peterson won by three seconds over U.S. teammate David Heron, while Weinberger was nipped by Ecuador's Esteban Enderica Salgado for third place.
"Honestly it's just kind of a relief," a composed Peterson said afterwards. "I would have been excited regardless of the finish, as long as I felt good about how the race went. I feel a little bit of weight off my shoulders, I felt like there was a little bit of pressure coming in."
The fouling of Rio's coastal waters by raw sewage has been well-documented in recent years, Both Peterson and Robinson say they hope organizers are forced to follow through on their promise to provide safe conditions for athletes.
"It was a terrible way to have to leave the sport," said Robinson, who grew progressively weaker in the months after the 2007 race and decided to walk away from competition. She said she has recovered her health thanks to a strict diet that includes no grains, refined sugar, starches or preservatives. Now a working mother, Robinson said she is confident USA Swimming is pushing for hard data and answers about the water quality in Rio.
Peterson, whose father, a marine biologist, helped instill his lifelong love of the ocean, has been back to race in a pro-am in Rio once since his surgery. Despite everything that followed the 2007 Pan Ams, "I have a lot of good memories from that race, going one-two with Fran," he said. "It's a beautiful venue, an iconic venue."
Extreme heat and organizational safety gaps cost Crippen his life in a 10K race in the United Arab Emirates in late 2010, during the same stretch when Peterson was at his most depleted and disheartened. That loss continues to resonate with Peterson.
"My story pales in comparison," he said. "But we were the two who were going to win [Olympic] medals. I had not reached my full potential. A lot of my dreams were ripped away. That drove me to come back."
Peterson has scruffy white-blond hair, an easy smile and an amiable manner that has made him a favorite of his teammates. He's also extremely tough, said 2012 Olympian Alex Meyer, who roomed with Peterson at the recent 10K in Portugal and persuaded him to have joint haircuts made somewhat nerve-wracking by a language barrier.
"He's so smart," Meyer said. "When the pace is fast, when the pace is slow, when there's a lot of attacking, when there's not a lot of attacking, he's very adaptable."
Peterson's retirement didn't last long, although he harbored few expectations that he could ever compete at the elite level again. He kept circling back to what he could change for the better in his training and lifestyle. "I could never find a pattern in diet or anything," he said. By 2012, he was back in the water, at first for fun, then in a masters program, then with a club.
That mission creep finally landed him back at the national level, but only after his 2013 surgery, which necessitated some more time off. Peterson resisted going on the operating table for years, but ultimately decided it would improve his daily life whether or not he ever raced seriously again. It has. "Now I just have a scar, and I don't feel I'm going to get sick again," Peterson said. He just bought a home and has plans to raise his own vegetables and perhaps acquire chickens.
Peterson's experiences have led him to think he has a grip on "what makes a good doctor, what patients need." He intends to study for the MCATs and anticipates applying to medical school next spring.
The convoluted Olympic selection formula depends in part on the results of next month's world championships in Russia. Peterson did not qualify for worlds and thus his fate is somewhat out of his hands at the moment. It has been hard to stay in the present and not constantly measure himself against the precocious talent he was 10 years ago.
"I wasn't close to making the [world] team this year," said Peterson, who finished sixth at the U.S. national championships last April. "But I'm in a much better place than I was.
"The journey has been really interesting. I have the opportunity to work toward this goal. These trips and events mean so much more to me."