Santa Rosa native Maya DiRado wins gold in 200-meter backstroke

Maya DiRado should have brought a bigger suitcase. The Santa Rosa native has a lot of hardware to take home from the Olympic Games in Rio, after winning what’s expected to be the last race of her swimming career.

DiRado, a Maria Carrillo and Stanford graduate, won a gold medal Friday night in the ?200-meter backstroke, a race she wasn’t expected to win. It was the fourth medal she’s won in Rio.

Hungarian Katinka Hosszu, dubbed “The Iron Lady” by her husband and controversial coach, Shane Tusup, was favored to finish ahead of DiRado for the third time this Olympics.

Someone forgot to tell DiRado, who grabbed her first individual gold medal, adding to a gold from the 4x200 freestyle relay, a silver in the 400-meter individual medley and a bronze in the 200-meter individual medley.

DiRado was half a body length behind for much of the race. She was slower than Hosszu in every leg but the last, beating her rival by 0.06 seconds.

“I was sitting up high by lane one but right on the wall, so coming in we could just totally see it happening. Boom,” Jill McCormick, Santa Rosa Junior College’s swimming and diving coach and a DiRado family friend for nearly two decades, said via phone from Rio after the race.

“We just lost our minds,” she said.

DiRado lost ground to Hosszu on the race’s turns, but was slowly closing the gap on her strokes throughout the event.

Hosszu had beaten DiRado in both the 400- and the 200-meter medleys, and Friday’s race was perhaps the least likely to produce a gold medal of any event in DiRado’s Olympic schedule.

McCormick said Hosszu “is very hard to beat,” but unlike other races, DiRado kept the swimmer one lane over “within the realm of striking distance.”

She gained on Hosszu in the final length and stretched for the fingertip win.

DiRado’s run at the Olympics has unfolded in near-perfect fashion, her dad, Ruben DiRado of south San Jose, said from Rio on Friday.

“I think about all of the kids that I have known that have worked hard. I don’t understand exactly why it all came together for her at this moment in time,” he said.

“I don’t know that she works harder than anyone. It’s like lightning in a bottle; you can kind of feel it coming together. The week has been beyond our expectations. I’m super happy for her. It’s like you just feel lucky and fortunate to be a part of it.”

While Hosszu dejectedly hung on the ropes behind her, DiRado’s face was a picture of joy. Or was it relief?

The management science and engineering major has vowed this is her one and only Olympics. Newly married, she has a business analyst job waiting for her in Atlanta.

But now that she’s alongside Katie Ledecky, Michael Phelps and Simone Manuel as the faces of U.S. Swimming, might there be a draw to stay with it, to ride this wave?

“That’s going to be the million-dollar question,” McCormick said. “I don’t think there is any part of me that thinks she is going to keep swimming.”

Santa Rosa Neptunes coach Dan Greaves taught DiRado from when she was a tyke to when she left for college. In addition to her awe-inspiring swimming, Greaves said he was proud of the way DiRado made a plan, executed it and didn’t waver. “Storybook” is the word he used.

“I just feel like she has handled her business better than anyone could have imagined,” he said. “Knowing that she set this up as this being the end, she set the story up - win or lose, it doesn’t matter. That took the pressure off her.”

But Greaves said he wouldn’t be surprised that if, after an extended break, DiRado might reconsider a return to the pool, considering her triumph in Rio.

Her dad isn’t so sure.

DiRado wrote her parents a “very heartfelt email” that they read early Friday morning, thanking them for the support during this part of her life, Ruben DiRado said.

This is my last day, she wrote. Thank you for being there all the way through and I’m excited for the finish.

“I think she is very aware, consciously aware, that this is the end,” he said. That was sort of what was freeing.

“She does not have any desire to re-create today; it is what it was and it was awesome,” he said. “I think she is super excited about tomorrow.”

You can reach sports columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.