How’s it feel to break world record in bronze medal race? ‘Complicated,’ Sam Watson says

LE BOURGET, France ― Sam Watson broke his own world record Thursday for the second time in these Olympics, so what could be better than that?

A gold medal, apparently.

Watson, the 18-year-old phenom from Southlake, turned a world-record 4.74 in speed climbing to secure the bronze medal only minutes after losing a shot at gold because of an error near the top of the 15-meter wall in the semifinals.

The “tiny little stumble” probably cost him .2 of a second, he said, enough to keep him from beating China’s Peng Wu and advancing to the gold medal race against Veddriq Leonardo of Indonesia.

Leonardo’s winning 4.75 – a world record if not for Watson’s time in the bronze ― gave Indonesia its first medal of these Games and its only gold in any sport outside badminton.

Watson graciously acknowledged his rival’s “heroic feat” for Indonesia. As for his own performance, the disappointment was clear in his expression on the medal stand and in comments at the news conference an hour later, when he captured perfectly and painfully the conundrum of his sport.

“I just lost the most important race of my life,” he said of the loss to Wu, “and now I have the next-most important race of my life, back-to-back, in five minutes.

“The emotions get a little complicated, for sure.”

Just the same, Watson has no complaints about a sport in which he’s rocketed to stardom. One tiny little stumble is all it takes when victories are sometimes measured three points to right of the decimal point. He’s good with that.

Asked shortly after the bronze medal race what it felt like to be the fastest in his sport and yet have no gold to show for it, he said he hadn’t had time to think it through.

But he’s remarkably grounded for someone who spends so much time up a wall.

“I think all that kind of stuff is external rather than internal,” he said. “I have a view of who I am in my mind and that doesn’t really change regardless of my performance.

“But other people will view me in certain ways and I hope that way is positive and a good representation of myself and my sport and my country.”

Nothing he did or said this week would give anyone reason to think otherwise. He was pumped that officials allowed him to pose like Usain Bolt next to his world-record time. He thinks he can go under 4.6 seconds. And he thinks his sport is on the cusp of a great future.

He came here with the idea of winning gold and breaking his world record and leaves with less than he would have liked.

On the other hand, he won the first bronze medal in speed climbing.

“No one will ever take that away from me,” he said. “I do find it a tremendous accomplishment.”

And then there’s this: He’s still faster than the gold medal winner.

“Yeah,” he said, smiling, “a hundredth of a second, I suppose.”

No supposing about it. It’s official.

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