By David

While money can’t buy swimming success, without money swimming success is very difficult. About eight months ago a generous corporate sponsor accepted this proposition and gave our team $10,000. With this help, could we lift the standard of the team’s fastest swimmers? Could we provide a generation of young swimmers with home grown role models? It was well worth a try, so here is what we did.

No – one moment – first, let me tell you the result. The team’s fastest swimmers did improve. Remember, we are a small team, so please don’t compare our modest results with North Baltimore, Fort Lauderdale or Mecklenburg. A Boeing 747 and a Piper Arrow both fly, but there the comparison should end. We completed the summer season with one male swimmer going a 50 second 100 LCM freestyle, two others swimming 52 seconds, and a fourth who swims 55. Our best 50 LCM swimmer went 23.32 and our new club records in the 50 and 100 LCM butterfly are 24.17 and 55.95. The 50 time is a new Masters 30-34 World Record. Our team ended the season with three Master’s US National Championship titles. We also lured back into swimming my daughter, Jane, who was once New Zealand’s national champion and Open Record Holder in the 200 breaststroke. And in triathlon one athlete from the team qualified for the 2009 Hawaiian World Ironman Championship.

Even our team’s most rabid critics, and there are a few of those, should accept that having a swimmer go 50 seconds in the 100, winning three US Masters titles and holding one FINA Master’s World Record is not bad progress for a team that, four years ago, had eight swimmers. Best of all, we are well poised to move forward from these modest beginnings.

And so how did it happen. Well, we went to Europe. We spent a week at the French Font Romeu national high altitude training camp. It is a beautiful spot, high in the Pyrenees where Lance Armstrong and his mates toil. The air might be thin, but it’s crisp and clean. The scenery is stunning. Alpine forests cover endless mountain slopes, broken only by ski trails winding and descending into small French villages. Fantastic cafés serve lunch with food only the French know how to prepare. All this and a 50 meter pool, a weight room, three meals a day including free wine, a free medical center and individual rooms for $45 a day.

We spent another three days in Barcelona competing in the first stop of the 2009 Mare Nostrum series. I’m a junky for the internationalism of it all. The teams from everywhere, the familiar central city pool, the world class competition, the busy city, the tourists; it’s great. For transport, our team relied on a nine seat Mercedes van and a two door, Mercedes SLK convertible. The SLK was monopolized by Skuba and Jane, who claim they never once drove it too fast. Skuba had a good meet and swam personal bests in the 50 and 100 freestyle.

And so we moved on to my favorite town, the French coastal village of Canet. I love it there; it’s so European, so Mediterranean, so intensely French. We rented a four bedroom Mediterranean villa for our five day stay. It was a little bit shabby – no chrome, no stainless steel, no plastic – but an enclosed paved courtyard with trees and tables a dining room with a huge communal table and a sitting room with lumpy and friendly couches and chairs. Canet has improved the town’s 50 meter pool by adding an indoor 25 meter warm-up pool. It can be a truly international facility now. The atmosphere at the Canet meet is unlike any other meet. It has an almost Sunday picnic atmosphere. But it’s not of course. No meet with Trickett, Sullivan, Bernard, Jukic and Jones is a picnic. Andrew and Skuba swam personal bests in all their events. Jane made a sub 30 second 50 meters return to swimming after a three year retirement [Jane’s note: I prefer to call that time an extended taper.]

The tour’s final stop was Monte Carlo. No place on earth could be more different from Canet. Here it is all Porsches and Ferraris and casinos. Shortly after we arrived I noticed a Ferrari stop outside our hotel. The hall porter explained that the driver was Jensen Button, the Formula One World Champion. Needless to say he drives for Ferrari. He also owns the hotel.

From way up on the coastal motorway, I never tire of the sight of this millionaire’s playground. Sitting on the hotel balcony eating lunch and gazing out at the Mediterranean, it’s hard not to be impressed, even when some swimmer five floors above hangs their suit out to dry and it begins dripping on to the table. Our guys were getting tired. They swam close to their best and we headed for home.

It’s a great trip and it works. With all the hardships involved in travel and hotels, the good ones love it and they improve. The sponsor’s trust that this would occur was well founded. The improvements they supported and we wanted were achieved. Thank you – you see, while money can’t buy swimming success, without money swimming success is very difficult.

Already the swimmers are planning Mare Nostrum 2010. It’ll be another great adventure and they will go faster.