Teresa Crippen swims for brother Fran's Olympic dream as well as her own

OMAHA, Neb. - The first dive into the water and the first strokes Teresa Crippen took while wrapping her head and her heart around the news in October 2010 that her brother Fran had died in an open-water swimming race were the hardest.

Stepping up to the blocks at this week's swimming trials?

Easier - but not, by any means, easy.

"I don't think there's another athlete in this building who has suffered that loss through swimming," said Dick Shoulberg, who coached all four Crippen siblings at Germantown Academy.

Qualifying for the event in which the youngest Crippen has her best shot, the 200-meter butterfly, begins Thursday. The final is Friday night. The top two finishers qualify for the London Olympics.

In the stands will be her parents, her two sisters, her brother-in-law, and a swimming community still shaken by Fran Crippen's death during an open-water swimming World Cup in the United Arab Emirates in 2010.

"Fran's always with me," Teresa, 22, said Wednesday, "and I know he would be here, cheering me on, and I know he is here cheering me on. But he's just not here in person. It does make it tough."

The Crippens, from Conshohocken, have been coming to Olympic trials since 2000, when the eldest of the four Crippen siblings, Maddy, made the Olympic team. She finished sixth in the 400-meter individual medley at the Sydney Games.

"Since 2000, the Olympics has been a heartstrings time for my family," said Maddy, who drove from her home in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Sean Plankey, to Omaha for the event. "You don't want to think of the good things. You don't want to think of the bad things. You just want it to get here."

Coloring this trials experience, of course, is the knowledge that Fran should have been here. And that, at long last, after coming up just short in 2008, then winning bronze at the 2009 world championships, he likely would have claimed a spot on the Olympic team.

Instead, only Teresa has the chance to stamp the Crippen name on the 2012 U.S. Olympic roster.

"In the beginning, I felt the burden on my shoulders to do that," she said. "But over the past 19 months, I think I believed in myself a little bit more and kind of remembered that it's not just for Fran - it's for me, too."

In the fall of 2010, Teresa Crippen was a junior at the University of Florida, an all-strokes swimmer who had posted her career-best 200 fly finish at the 2010 Pan Pacific championships, finishing second.

A week after her brother's death, out of commitment to her Florida teammates and to a mantra in the Crippen household - if you sign up for something, you see it through - she returned to the pool at Germantown Academy. Her sister, Claire, then swimming for the University Virginia, was with her.

"It kind of helped us get out of the house, get away from the mayhem," Teresa said. "And once our heads are in the water, no one can talk to us. So it was relieving in that point, because it was just ourselves doing what we love. But it is hard doing the same sport that took my brother's life, for sure."

Once she returned to Florida, she had the support of her coaches and teammates. But she had setbacks.

"There were times when I would just be swimming, and then it would hit me like a brick wall, and I couldn't go any more, and I just would sit on the wall and start crying," she said.

Soon after Shoulberg arrived for this week's trials, another coach approached him and said, "I want to see Teresa make the Olympic team. I'm not going to leave here happy until she makes the team."

The week did not start well. She withdrew from the 400 IM and 100 fly on Monday because of a stomach flu. In the preliminaries of the 200 freestyle Wednesday, she finished 21st. Only the top 16 finishers advanced to the semifinals.

She still has the 200 fly, starting Thursday, and the 200 backstroke, starting Saturday.

And if she doesn't make the Olympic team, Maddy no doubt will tell her the same thing she told Fran more than once: "I was, like, 'You don't have to make an Olympic team. I understand. I get the Olympic dream. I've lived it. But you don't have to make the Olympic team to make people remember you any more.'

"I think [Fran's] death proved that point," Maddy said. "There were thousands of people at his funeral."

And thousands more cheering on his baby sister this week.