Karen Smyers

Smyers's biopsies did show a cancerous thyroid, which she had removed in December 1999, just a few months before the Olympic trials began in Sydney, Australia. Back in training, she placed 22nd overall and fourth among American women in the Sydney competition to choose the first member of the U.S. team. She still had to compete in Dallas, where the other two members would be chosen. As the media began covering her Olympic hopes, in light of her bad luck over the preceding few years, Sports Illustrated called her "the Triathlete Most Likely to be Eaten by a Shark at the Sydney Olympics" (there had been nine shark sightings near the swim course). Always one with a sense of humor—she writes a column called "Laughter Is the Best Medicine" for a triathlon magazine—Smyers took it all in stride. But when it came time for the Dallas trials, she placed seventh instead of in the top two she needed to make the Olympic team.