Allison Schmitt, in all her goofy Olympic glory, dancing on the pool deck before winning a gold medal at the 2012 London Games, was singing a Rihana tune into a hairbrush with her team USA roommate Elizabeth Beisel. And yet just one year later she did not know where all her happiness had gone, quietly sobbing in her room at the University of Georgia.

She told,  “I couldn’t understand any of it, I didn’t know why I was crying, I didn’t know why I was upset.” She only knew that something was wrong and getting worse. And it was not there until the unexpected suicidal death of her 17 years old cousin April Bocian, who was also a brilliant athlete, which she disclosed to her family to express the depths of her depression. Not long after the funeral and the revelations that left her parents back home in Michigan shaken, it was a message from April’s mother, Amy, resonated.

Schmitt said, “My aunt said to me, ‘You’re the first person April saved,’ and I do believe that, “, wiping away tears during a lengthy interview last month at the U.S. Olympic training center in Colorado Springs, where she and a group that included longtime coach Bob Bowman and close friend Michael Phelps were finishing up a six-week altitude camp in preparation for this month’s Olympic Trials. “Even though she’s not here to tell her story, we can do the best we can to help her tell it.”

By Prakriti Neogi