00:00He fell in before the starting buzzer had even sounded and just like that his Olympic dream
00:04was dead in the water. Miguel Durán Navier knew it was all over. A single false start means an
00:11automatic immediate disqualification. Miguel burst into tears. It was his first Olympics,
00:16his only individual event and his hopes of making a splash on the world stage had dried up before
00:21the race had even started. He climbed up out of the pool, drenched in shame, he grabbed his things
00:26and he left the deck, dripping with embarrassment. As he drifted away towards the locker rooms,
00:31he heard the crowd swell with a sympathetic wave of applause in his wake. However, as he trickled
00:36away he expected to hear the race restart, but it didn't. All the other swimmers were just floating
00:42around while the officials had frozen, totally submerged in reviewing the false start. Until
00:47they did something that Miguel wasn't expecting. They asked him to come back out to his starting
00:52block again. See, what the officials realised when skimming through the footage is that as the
00:57swimmers drowned in the noise of the audience, completely saturating the stadium, there had been
01:02a loud scream bursting out of the crowd right at the very moment when Miguel was on the brink,
01:07overflowing with adrenaline and expecting the buzzer to sound. The scream had also caused a ripple in
01:13another swimmer in lane 3, who almost spilled over the edge, only just managing to stay anchored on the
01:19diving block. And so the officials decided that the fairest thing to do would be to allow Miguel
01:23a second chance. On the surface, it seemed like a stroke of luck. However, after the officials relayed
01:29the message and Miguel resurfaced, wading his way back through the tidal wave of support flooding in
01:34from the crowd, his stomach continued to churn. By now, the damage had already soaked in. His nervous
01:40system had gone from a simmer to boiling over as he was plunged into the deep end, and it already
01:46had his
01:46focus completely drained from him. A second chance was a shallow consolation. However,
01:52he wasn't ready to throw in the towel just yet. Despite his diluted hope, he tried not to let it
01:57dampen his spirit. Although, with his confidence now well and truly flushed away, his performance
02:02tanked, and the race was a total wash. As the other swimmers propelled themselves through the water
02:07like a jet, Miguel just couldn't reel them back in. He entered last in the heat, his dream evaporated,
02:13and he never made it back to another Olympics again.
02:15So, once again,
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