Olympic Redemption: Nic Fink and Carson Foster Bring Home Medals In Swimming

NANTERRE, France — Nic Fink and Carson Foster know what it’s like to just miss. Fink missed making the podium in the 200-meter breaststroke at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 and Carson just missed qualifying for the 2020 team.  

Now the two swimmers both know what it’s like to stand on the podium. At the Olympic Games Paris 2024, Fink tied world-record-holder Adam Peaty from Great Britain for the silver medal in the men’s 100-meter breaststroke. Fink and Peaty finished “a fingernail” (two-hundredths of a second) behind winner Nicolo Martinenghi from Italy.

And in his first Olympic Games after just missing three years ago, Foster swam the 400-individual medley next to one of the stars of Paris 2024, Léon Marchand from France. Marchand won the race — as expected, breaking Michael Phelps’s 16-year-old Olympic record. But Foster, 22, duked it out for third and had tears in his eyes as he stepped onto the podium.

“I've never really gotten emotional before with swimming, and I think that's why that's happened to me over the last couple of months, with trials and tonight,” Foster said. “Tonight feels really good to stand on that podium because of all the experiences I've had where I've come up just short.”

For Fink, the medal meant that he finally could wear his Team USA podium outfit.

“There's a lot of great feelings and not so great feelings in the sport,” he explained. “And one of my least favorite feelings was bringing podium sweats [to the pool in Tokyo] and never getting a chance to wear them.”

“That feeling definitely helped motivate me a lot these past couple years,” Fink added.

Both men are not the swimmers they were back in 2021. Fink, 31, is now a married man with a full-time job and a baby on the way. After Tokyo, he earned a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering at Georgia Tech and in March 2023, accepted a full-time job as a project manager with Quanta Utility Engineering Services in Atlanta.

In July 2023, the couple moved to Dallas, Texas, after Fink’s wife, 2016 Olympian Melanie Margalis, accepted a job as swim coach at Southern Methodist University. Fink works remotely. They are expecting their first child in mid-September.

“I did the whole professional swimming thing where I eat, sleep, swim, rinse and repeat,” said Fink. “I was ready to move on to other stages of life while still trying to keep a high level in swimming. I think having the job really helps me compartmentalize everything. If you have a bad day in the pool, it really takes your mind off things and keeps you focused on other things in life.”

The swim-life balance has worked for Fink. Since the Tokyo Olympic Games, he has won 13 world championship medals, including gold in the 100-meter breaststroke at the 2024 world championships and silver here in Paris. And he may not be done yet.

“I could have probably closed the door a couple of times on my career, and it's only gotten better and better,” he said. “So I don't want to say anything definitive. LA’s [Los Angeles Olympic Games] four years away. A home Olympics would be pretty cool.”

As for his Tokyo podium sweats, he still has them hidden in a closet at home. No word where he will store his Paris podium attire.

Unlike Fink, Foster has not changed his physical location in the past three years. He still trains at the University of Texas. What’s changed for Foster is his mentality, and the Olympic bronze medal is a reward for the work he has put in, both in the pool and out.

Back in 2021, he was on the list of favorites to make the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team after he finished second in the 400 IM at the NCAA championships as a freshman. He went to Olympic Trials scared — his biggest fear that he would not make the team. And he did not, finishing third in his best event, the 400 IM.

“The pressure of needing to be perfect backfired,” he told Olympics.com in February 2024.

In big races, he struggled to “stay in his own lane” — mentally, not physically.

“The first thing that goes wrong in my race in the past, it was lights-out for me, and I would just battle those inner demons,” Foster said in June after qualifying for the 2024 U.S. Olympic Team.

After the devastation of not making it to Tokyo, he was approached about working with a performance coach. But Foster was offended.

“Deep down, I knew I needed it,” he said at trials. “But I was like, I don't need that. There’s a stigma towards it.”

He relented, though, and now works with Jim Murphy, whom Foster calls “the best performance coach in the world.”

Murphy has helped him realize that racing is just the product of training, and the only parts that he has control over were how hard and well he trains and how he handles his life around swimming.

The work Foster has put into changing his mentality paid off in Paris. He walked onto the pool deck to a roaring crowd that only roared louder when Marchand was introduced. To Foster, it sounded like a soccer stadium.

“Léon, Léon!” they chanted.

While Marchand — the current IM king — swam away with the race, finishing in 4:02.95 (shaving almost a second off Phelps’s Olympic record set in 2008), Foster stayed in his lane and fought for a medal. Although the American touched the wall 5.71 seconds after Marchand, and just 0.04 seconds behind Japan’s Tomoyuki Matsushita, he thought back to 2021 and was content.

“Had that not happened, where I missed the Olympic team, I don’t know if I’d be here right now,” he said. “I don’t know if I would have had the same career that I've had the last three years. [Missing that team] just gave me the ultimate perspective over how to handle swimming as a professional.”

“Tonight just felt good.”

With the bronze medal, Foster continued a U.S. tradition in the men’s 400 IM, a race introduced to the Olympic program in 1964. The only Olympiads where a U.S. man has not stood on the 400 IM podium are the 1980 (boycotted) and 1984 Games. At the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, Chase Kalisz and Jay Litherland went 1-2. Unfortunately, in Paris, Kalisz did not advance to the finals.

Fink will compete in the men’s medley relay later this week. Foster is scheduled to compete in the men’s 200 IM — again with Marchand (who now also trains at Texas, where his coach Bob Bowman recently moved) — with heats and semis on August 1 and finals on August 2.