Cullen Jones recounts a funny 2008 Olympic story in a recent article in the NY Times.

Michael Phelps wakes Jones to tell him that LeBron James and other basketball stars want to meet them in the lobby of the hotel. Cullen goes downstairs and hears LeBron talking to Phelps about going for his 8th gold medal. But when he meets Cullen, LeBron exclaims, “Wait, you got a brother on the team?”

I know Jones is just living his life. He happens to be living his life as a professional swimmer, complete with a Nike endorsement and a job with Make a Splash. But Nike et al are betting on him transcending also ran status, and becoming Tiger or Venus and Serena.

Cullen Jones is taking it one step at a time, first battling performance anxiety that ended up excluding him from the 2004 Olympic team. That’s not even mentioning the demands of sprinting the 50 free–where it’s much better if you don’t breathe for the whole heat.

He’s currently competing in the World Championships–FINA in Shanghai. According to his twitter page, he competes out of the pool as well:

“Well the spades tournament is tied up 2-2 with @MichaelPhelps &@ryanlochte and @Rcberens and I”

Let’s wish him much success–in spades, in the pool, and in life!

My story about a friend’s experience at the beach sent chills through my daughter, and she questioned whether she really wanted to be a lifeguard. But she went through the training anyway, and my daughter was a lifeguard for 2 years at the Y. Now she’s moved onto a different phase in her life, involving glamor and beauty.

This weekend, we went to the family reunion together, and I thought I’d take the babies to the pool during our down time. My lifeguard daughter joined us, but she hadn’t planned on swimming.

The hotel pool was typical: swim at your own risk. It also suggested that adults accompany children to the pool at a 3 children to 1 adult ratio. I saw maybe 2 adults and two pools and a hot tub full of kids! Everyone was black, and most were non-swimmers. (That is being charitable, I would say nobody could swim, but that would be assuming).

It was a disaster in the making. My daughter cringed as she saw a teenaged girl dive into the 4 foot water.

I had a raging headache and wanted to just take my children and leave the splashing, disorderly mess behind. My lifeguard made a quick decision and decided to go ‘on duty.’ She told the diving girl, who tried her stunt a second time, that she could break her neck diving into the shallow water, and she should limit her diving to the 6 foot water. My daughter prefaced her comments with, “I don’t mean to get in your business or anything, but I am a lifeguard, and you could break your neck diving in the shallow water…”

The girl thanked my daughter, told her she didn’t know that, and seeing as how she couldn’t swim, she would refrain from diving.

Pretty soon, most of the people in the pool were clamoring for swim lessons. “If I’d intended to get my hair wet, I would have taught them to swim,” my daughter, who was in glamor mode at the pool continued.

Eventually the group at the pool settled down and left.

I smell a learn to swim business opportunity–leasing swim lessons and lifeguards at hotels.
How would that work?

Discovery Channel’s show, Surviving the Cut makes you wonder what you thought you were doing in the pool. The show follows wannabe elite naval forces through intense training, including swimming in 45 degree water at night.

In a recent episode, we watched a black man, Guy Smith swim over a mile in 45 degree water with an injured leg. The group of SWCC candidates started out with 40 and ended up with 10 men over the course of 50 days of grueling basic training.

Next stop? Advanced training.

Guy Smith made the first cut. We’ll see how he does in round two.

On my last post, I mentioned the embarrassment that was the black chef on Extreme Chefs. I hadn’t seen the worst yet. When the show ran again hours later, I saw how the eager brother ran to the lake, beat the other two chefs to the punch, and dove in. He proceeded to go nowhere fast, but down. Blaming the seaweed and the fact that he was wearing clothes, the chef floundered in the same place for a minute, before lifeguards on the scene dove in to rescue him.

The black chef was then given a time penalty of 5 minutes after the last chef finished the aquatic challenge.

And the rest happened as I reported earlier.

Same moral. When it comes to swimming, what you don’t know can hurt you. Or kill you.
That is all.

It does seem like a stretch for Food Network to combine Survivor and Chopped, but hey, why not? I was happy to give it a try.

When I tuned in, three chefs had to swim out to a spot in the cold body of water, catch a fish, (which had already been trapped for them), and then get in a boat and row back to a cooking station.

While the two non-black chefs gamely dove in and tried their hand at the aquatic challenge, the black chef chose to stay on shore and add 5 minutes to his cooking time.

If he couldn’t swim, that was a wise choice. But could not knowing how to swim ruin his chances at winning Extreme Chefs, thereby limiting his career? Time will tell. He did lose the cooking challenge after the aquatic event.

What you don’t know about swimming can hurt you.

Edited to add: Chef Jerome, the black chef ended up coming in second. It likely had less to do with swimming than cooking, but swimming could have given him an edge.

Here’s the winner of that race I mentioned a few days ago. Enjoy.