By David
Writing for Swimwatch is not as easy as you may think. Take right now for example. What is there to write about?
Well, I could tell you about Skuba and Andrew going to the Grand Prix swim meet in Charlotte, North Carolina. That’s the meet Michael Phelps is using to reintroduce himself into polite company. Andrew and Skuba are entered in the 50, 100 and 200 freestyle. If they swim times close to their personal bests I will be well pleased. Their training is aimed at meets later in the season. I did notice that Corney Swanepoel from New Zealand is entered. He’s ranked second behind Phelps in the 100 butterfly. I did hear that Universal Sport is covering the event on their internet channel. That could well be worth watching.
The rest of our team is swimming in a local meet in Florida this weekend. Like Phelps, two of our senior swimmers will be reintroducing themselves to the swimming world. Their time out from swimming has been longer than Phelps but less clouded. Ozzie was – and is again – a very good swimmer. He competed for Venezuela in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games and while swimming at Auburn won an NCAA Championship, participated in a 4×50 freestyle relay that set a world best time and secured six All American Honors. He’s pretty serious about swimming well again. It should be fun to watch his first step in that direction. Missy’s a pretty good swimmer as well. She won seven Washington State high school titles, competed in the 2004 Olympic Trials and seven other National championships. Her best 100 yards breaststroke is an impressive 1.01.38. She is traveling with the Aqua Crest team to this year’s Mare Nostrum series. Hopefully the local meet will prepare her for the sterner European test to come.
I’m looking forward to Mare Nostrum. The team leaves in two weeks and will spend the first week at the French high altitude training facility in the Pyrenees. I’ve been there once before. It is a great facility in an idyllic part of the world. At the end of the week the first meet of the Mare Nostrum series will be held in Barcelona. Swimwatch editor and my daughter, Jane, is coming to the meet in Barcelona and will travel with the team to Canet and Monaco. I went to Jane’s first swim meet when she was about six years old. Since then I’ve followed her around the world watching her compete in about twenty different countries. I’ve seen her set national records, compete in World Cup finals, win national and multi-national championships and it was always fun. Besides, it’s about time we did dinner again at the Clos de Pins in Canet, certainly the world’s best, unknown restaurant.
That’s about all that’s happening around here just now. But before I go, I heard this week there are several swim teams who refuse to allow parents on their pool deck during practice. That’s a bloody shame. They have no idea what they’re missing. For example today I overheard two of our most attractive mothers discussing the importance of tanning their “white bits” before the summer swim suit season. Evidentially one of the mothers had been doing something about her “white bits” on an air mattress in her secluded backyard pool when she noticed a news helicopter hovering above. Now that’s not all that unusual. The house is reasonably close to Florida’s busy I-95 freeway. Accidents are an endless source of fascination for news helicopters. This helicopter however was different. It remained fixed at 500 feet over this particular backyard pool and its very private “white bits”. Fearing the worst our mother paddled quickly to the corner nearest her home and made a dash for cover. Safely inside she looked out the window just in time to see the helicopter disappearing in the general direction of Boca Raton airport. My guess is that “white bits” make a much better photograph than an accident on the I-95.
Swimwatch will report on what happens at the Grand Prix and at Mare Nostrum. Good manners however require this to be a final mention of anything to do with “white bits”.
