Anthony Nesty, an Olympic legend in Suriname, coaches U.S. swim team -

NANTERRE, France — On this business trip across the Atlantic where his mission is to marshal as many American swimmers as possible to the Paris Olympics medal podium, Anthony Nesty is much more interested in making history than he is in talking about it.

“I just don’t dwell on the past,” he said by way of explanation. “My thing is, I live in the here and now.”

Nesty won’t parade around the pool deck waving his athletic résumé, chase after NBC cameras to revisit the past or feel the need to remind anyone, really, that 36 years ago he made Olympic history when he chased down one of the sport’s biggest stars, becoming the first Black swimmer to win an Olympic gold medal and the first athlete from Suriname to medal at all.

“He doesn’t talk about his achievements as a swimmer or as a coach,” said Katie Ledecky, one of his star pupils. “Not many coaches out there who can say they’ve been through what we’ve been through, putting in the work to get to that Olympic level and winning a gold medal.”

Nesty’s fingerprints are, of course, all over the United States’ pool prospects here. He’s the head coach of the men’s team in Paris and will help set the relay teams. If the Americans are able to fend off the charging Australians for medal dominance, Nesty will be among those deserving credit. He’s also the personal coach of some of the Americans’ best medal threats — Ledecky, Caeleb Dressel, Bobby Finke — back in Gainesville, Fla., where he heads up the booming University of Florida program.

He doesn’t need to remind his swimmers that he knows what Olympic waters feel like, and he remembers how the nerves and excitement can wash over you on the starting block and how the elation of being the first to the wall sticks with you forever. Nesty, 56, is the rare swim coach who has won an Olympic medal of his own and still stands as one of the most celebrated underdog stories in Olympic lore.

A final push toward history

Nesty was born in Trinidad and Tobago, and his family moved to Suriname when he was just a few months old. Like most South American countries, Suriname is soccer crazy, but Nesty’s father wanted his son to take up an individual sport and settled on swimming.

“I hated it at first,” Nesty said. “But as time progressed, I got better at it.”

He won bigger meets and posted faster times, eventually qualifying for the Pan American Games in 1983 and the Olympics a year later, when he was all of 16. At the Los Angeles Games, he posted the 21st-fastest time in the preliminary heats of the 100-meter butterfly, 0.34 seconds away from advancing.

He showed plenty of promise but needed a change of scenery to continue his development. At the time, Suriname had just one Olympic-size pool, and the family decided to send him to the Bolles School, a prep school in Jacksonville, Fla., where he blossomed as an athlete.

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Nesty entered the Seoul Olympics in 1988 feeling confident he could make the final of the 100 butterfly, but Matt Biondi was the king of the pool there, with hopes of matching Mark Spitz’s then-record seven gold medals at a single Olympics.

Nesty had the third-fastest time entering the final and knew if he could just hold that position, he would reach the medal podium. Biondi jumped out to a big lead to no one’s surprise — he would go on to win five gold medals in Seoul and break four world records — and Nesty was in fifth place at the turn.

He started to make up ground but was still more than half a body length behind Biondi with about 25 meters remaining. Nesty thought if he kept pushing, he could finish third, maybe second. He closed the gap in a matter of seconds.

At the finish, Biondi appeared to glide into the wall, while Nesty squeezed in one final stroke. Nesty pulled up his goggles and found the scoreboard overhead.

“You turn around, and you see the number one next to your name,” Nesty recalled. “Just an awesome feeling.”

Nesty set an Olympic record, finishing in 53 seconds. Biondi settled for silver, just 0.01 seconds behind, surely doomed by his mistimed final strokes. “'Maybe if I had grown my fingernails a little bit longer,” Biondi reportedly said at the time.

The result was stunning — “an almost obscure swimmer from an obscure nation” as the New York Times reported the next day. Olympic officials scurried to find the Suriname anthem to play for the medal ceremony, and reporters had to scramble to an atlas to learn about this country of about 380,000 people.

Thirty-six years later, Nesty is understated when asked to look back on the significance of being the first Black swimmer to win Olympic gold.

“I don’t dwell on that stuff, but obviously it’s history,” he said. “Just being lucky at the right place at the right time in my career.”

A quiet confidence that’s contagious

In Suriname, Nesty was feted as a hero. The country put his face on a postage stamp and a gold coin. At a celebratory parade, fans showered him with money. A local stadium was named after him, as was a jet from Surinam Airways.

He’s still the lone Olympic medalist Suriname has ever produced, and he remains popular there today. “The older people recognize me,” he said. “The younger ones have no clue.”

Nesty returned to the 1992 Olympics and won bronze in the 100 fly. He retired not long after and went into coaching, eventually getting the Gators men’s job in 2006 and adding the women’s program in 2021.

“What I’m most proud of is the improvement of the athletes, from Year 1 to Year 2 to Year 3,” Nesty said. “So I kind of made that my passion, and here we are, years later.”

He remained close to the Olympics after hanging up his goggles, serving as an assistant coach for Suriname in 2004 and its head coach in 2008. He also was the country’s flag bearer at the Opening Ceremonies in Beijing, remarkably selected over any active athletes.

Nesty was an assistant coach on the U.S. staff at the Tokyo Olympics, where his four Florida swimmers won nine medals, including five golds by Dressel. Following those Games, Ledecky, with seven Olympic titles already to her name, decided to relocate to Gainesville and train under Nesty, too. She said she was struck by the coach’s “quiet confidence.”

“The way he carries himself rubs off on his athletes,” Ledecky said. “You want to give your best effort for him. Everyone in that program stays very hungry, whether they’ve won Olympic gold or they’re trying to make the SEC team. Everyone’s always striving for more. That’s just the standard he sets.”

Coaching in the Olympic Games is different than swimming in them, of course. The swimmer has to perform. The coach has to prepare. Nesty looks back on his long career around the pool, and in many ways, he said, he feels that’s what he always has done best.

“I truly believe my history and where I come from and my approach in handling the athlete — I think all those years have really prepared me for the biggest stage of my career,” he said.

Dave Sheinin contributed to this report.

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