Every four years the world’s athletes get a chance to shine and a chance to be the singular best in their discipline. When those great athletes rise to the occasion on competition day, predicted or not, it is often on the shoulders of a legion that worked in support during the long years of training and competition before the Olympic Games. Most often leading the support are the parents, then come coaches, influential teachers, siblings and friends (the good ones), mentors, heroes. Of course, all the leveraged effort hinges on their beneficiaries fortitude and personal drive to become the best.

Bremerton’s Nathan Adrian is a golden example of that not-often-talked-about truth resting behind hundreds of gold medals won during more than a century of Olympic Games. In his case, siblings must be added to the recipe for success.

Home from the games and after a blitz of local appearances at which it appears he gave as much attention as he gave to national appearances, such as “Today” and the “Tonight Show,” Adrian was in a major regional newspaper column thanking his Bremerton, for its “awesome” treatment and reception.

When it comes to the rewards of Olympic victory there will be and should be many for Adrian. For his clearly devoted family, Adrian’s success at the games is itself the reward. And, while there  is no tangible gain for the larger community that worked to produced such a wonderfully talented young man, there is the morale boost for the City of Bremerton whose residents have a hero, one of them, to look up to; an example of what hard work and community can do.