Olympic Swimmer Elizabeth Beisel Has Music Dripping From Her Fingertips

RIO DE JANEIRO — This city pulses with an energy that compels a bus driver to fill the silence with song as he sits idly in traffic. It pulses with a rhythm that prompts a woman on a custodial crew in Olympic Park to thrum on a garbage can lid to music only she can hear as an elevator sweeps her off the ground floor. Like her Brazilian hosts, the United States Olympian Elizabeth Beisel has the music in her, too.

The internal beat that serves as Beisel’s metronome in the pool, enabling her to maintain the right tempo and rhythm in all her strokes in the 400-meter individual medley, also moves her toward any piano she spots, be it in an Omaha hotel lobby or an Amsterdam train station. She will…