Tenth Day on The Ground - Post Mortem on the Heartbreaking High Jump Competition - August 30th, 2021

This blog post originated from Clayton Frech’s personal Facebook page.

Yes, it took me an extra couple of days to get this post out. I have to say this has been an incredibly tough couple of days for Ezra, myself, and our family. I’ll try to walk you through the day without getting too emotional.

So in case you missed news, Ezra came in 5th in the High Jump competition. This was NOT the place he was hoping for, planning for, or expecting. It was a thrilling competition nonetheless, but unfortunately Ezra watched the final heights from the bench, where Sam won gold in dramatic fashion – he needed one jump to win Gold, and he did it!

When Ezra missed the 3rd attempt at 1.83…. I could feel every ounce of shock, disbelief, sadness, and disappointment as I watched him from the stands. I felt like I got punched in the gut, and the feeling didn’t go away for a long time… It was brutal. I honestly didn’t know what to do with myself. I wanted to scream, cry, run and hug him. I honestly just wanted to curl up and cry... But I also wanted to pay full attention to Sam and his grind-it-out victory, but man, it was hard to concentrate on anything but Ezra.

Here's how the day went down... That morning, I got up early as usual and was pretty anxious. Writing is good therapy for me, so I cranked out a couple blog posts and got myself caught up. I was quite ambitious and wrote up a very detailed timeline of Ezra’s highs and lows in life and sport. Check it out if you haven’t seen it.

I wanted you all to understand, while he makes sport and life look easy, it really hasn’t been easy. He’s fallen hundreds of times, maybe thousands, because of his prosthetic leg. He’s had two major surgeries to improve functionality. He's had ICU Psychosis where he ripped the IVs right out of his arm. He’s been teased and bullied because of his disability. He’s been counted out. He’s NOT made teams because of his disability, where they overlooked his ABILITIES. He suffered a potentially career-ending injury at the age of 11, in 6th grade. Most of you may remember seeing him in a wheelchair. But you probably didn’t know the extent of the fracture and the risk to his future sport career. This was a very dramatic moment in his career. Simply put, none of this is easy. Literally none of it. And the sacrifices he made starting in 6th grade, accelerating through 8th, and then going into overdrive in 10th grade... It's hard to put it into words...

Anyhow, I wrote this long blog and then packed up and headed over to the village a little after lunch time. He was pretty busy packing and getting ready so I didn’t really see him until he came down to meet the coaches and walk down to the bus. I just hung out in the lobby and tried to work, but mostly just watched some sport on TV. I was too pumped up to do much of anhything. Eventually it was 4pm and time to head out. Ezra and Sam came down. Coach Mack did an equipment check for him and Sam. Then we started heading to the transport area.

It was a fairly quiet bus ride down, with Sam and Ezra playing video games and listening to music. We got to the warmup track with a fair amount of time before they need to go to the call tent. The weather was actually kind of nice, cooler than it has been. They did some very light workouts before going to the call tent. They knew they would have a lot of time on the track prior to the event starting, so they didn’t need a full workout. We all just sat on the lawn and hung out for a while with some of the other athletes and coaches. It was calm, cool. A few rain drops hit. There was lightening 10-15 miles away or so. We were debating what conditions would warrant a postponement. My nerves were firing inside but I tried to play it cool. Ezra and Sam both seemed to be in really good spirits, ready to take on the competition.

At around 6pm we walked Ezra and Sam over to the call tent and they were quickly absorbed into the tent matrix. Mack and I opted to go get seats – we were worried about the prospect of rain and figuring it all out. We had great seats, right behind the pit. The Brazilian coaches were there. Literally moments after we sat down a huge crew of Indian coaches arrived, sitting on three sides of us. They had 3 jumpers in the event and this is a HUGE event for their track team. Sam was silver behind one of their jumpers in Rio. These guys are good. Really good.

Eventually the athletes all came out from underneath the stadium and started to measure out their marks and do some warm-up jumps. Ezra looked great. Comfortable. Confident. Happy. Strong. Ezra did one last practice jump before 7:17 when they took them behind the jump screen for the intros. The athlete intros were awesome. Ezra did a bottle flip, landed it, and ran out. So cool.

So here’s how the event went down. Ezra was the first jumper listed, but he didn’t come in at the lower heights. There were amputees who don’t use their prosthetic jumping at the lower heights… Going in, we figured medals would be won above 1.8M. we weren't sure how high, but that is sort of the number we thought you needed to be above.

Ezra's Jumps Progression

• 1.69 Cleared (5 ft 6.5 inches) This is a pretty comfortable height for him. His first height. Didn’t give him any trouble.

• 1.73 Cleared (5 ft 8.1 inches) This is essentially the height (1.74) that he cleared at the angel city games presented by the Hartford in 2019 which hit the B standard and made the US team. He then went on to compete at Junior Worlds, Para Pan American Games, and the World Championships. He’s a vastly improved jumper. He’s bigger, strong, and has much better technique. A relatively easy height for him now.

• 1.77 Cleared (5 ft 9.7 inches) – Getting this on his first attempt was a great sign and momentum builder.

• 1.8 Cleared (5 ft 10.8 inches) on his 2nd attempt – this is the height he cleared at Trials that punched his ticket to Tokyo. If you got the video feed, you can see it is starting to really pour at this point. The track is completely soaked with puddles everywhere. This seems to account for the first miss.

• 1.83 (6 ft) – This is where the medals would be decided. 3rd place was a 1.83 jump. However, Ezra missed all three of his attempts at this height. He has cleared this height a number of times recently. We have evaluated what happened and there’s definitely something to the rain/water challenges. I was even just looking at the videos I took and the rain is just dumping… and the entire track is one big puddle. It looks completely different, with the water reflecting back, which could be a little disorienting. It also was a slip risk – Ezra has had his blade slip out before, so he was a little worried about this. These are all small little things that can add up to a jump not going perfectly to get over the bar. His third attempted is the heartbreaker. He had TONs of height over the bar, but his blade clipped the bar. You can see how stunned he is. He thought he cleared the bar clean, then he sees the red flag and the bar down. I swear this was like an out of body experience for me. I just assumed he would get over that bar. HE assumed he would get over that bar. He can clear this height!! He has done it before! Devastating…. No other word.

The look in his eyes, the sheer disappointment, broke my heart. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of him. I wanted to hug him. I wanted him to know I loved him and the result simply didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. I wanted him to know everything would be ok, everything would work out, and that his dreams are just that much closer to being a reality. But there was no way to communicate this…. At one point he walked over, I think at the end of the competition. I just told him I loved him. What else can a father say in a moment like that?

He watched Sam grind to the gold and was incredibly supportive given how crappy he was feeling in the moment. He did get to watch some serious history with that final jump for gold by Sam.

While Sam and the other medalists ran over to grab their flags, Ezra just stood there. We are hoping somebody got a photo of him. Sam kept telling him, take it in, remember this feeling. So Ezra just stood there. Staring. Watching. Taking it in. Watching 3 Paralympians prance around with their flags. Of course, we were beyond thrilled for Sam. But Ezra is not going to let that happen again, trust me...

I was super anxious to meet him after the meet. LaTi and I waited for quite some time. Eventually he came out… and he was really upset. It was one of the saddest moments in my life, to see your child crushed in this manner. He felt like he had wasted the last 5 years and sacrificed for nothing… Oh gosh it was so hard to sit and listen to this… I knew it was just emotions talking, so I tried not to respond to everything he was saying. What could I even say? I don’t know this kind of heartbreak, at least I can’t think of anything like this in my life. This moment was so big, so public, and had such a significant personal investment. Most of my personal let-downs have been much quieter. I hugged him as much as I could. LaTi and he hugged for quite some time. The entire moment, right outside the stadium, in the pouring rain, with an inconsolable child... I again felt like, this isn't really happening is it?

We eventually packed it up and headed to the bus. LaTi took a taxi to the hotel but I stayed with Ezra to get him back to the village. It was a quiet bus ride. We dropped his gear off in his room and went to the cafeteria. He didn’t want to see anyone, so we grabbed food and went to the far corner. We sat there for over two hours. We didn’t leave until after 2am. It was pretty quiet much of the time. I just let him process.

At some point I could see he was turning the corner. Bahar called, equally emotional as I was feeling…. And we had a nice 3 way conversation…. I could tell he was starting to map out a game plan. It was definitely a different game plan than he was hoping for… But in some ways, when the medals start to flow, they will mean that much more to him now. He knows what it feels like to get close but to not achieve your dream.

It’s crazy to think that this will strengthen his resolve and his character… I know it will. But the kid has resolve and character in spades already! Did he really need this additional struggle? I guess he did. I can’t even begin to imagine the young man who emerges from this.

He walked me to the security checkpoint so I could grab a taxi. My security guard buddy Toyoda was there and had a gift for Ezra – a traditional Japanese robe. So cool! He was so honored to meet Ezra. So sweet.

By the time I left him, I felt really good that he was moving through the emotions and starting to reframe things and extract some of the nuggets for the future. The future is so tremendously bright for this kid… He’ll be 19 in Paris 2024, 23 in LA 2028, and a mere 27 in Brisbane 2032.

Watch out world, the kid is going to come roaring back, I promise you.

Clayton

PS - I know I owe a couple more posts and the final two days in Tokyo. I'll try to get them done while we travel. We leave late in the day 9/3 and arrive in the morning of 9/3! Gotta love going against the time change!