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Swimming's hidden secret
SYDNEY, Australia -- Visitors to Oz are told, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." So I looked behind the curtain in Oz and this is what I saw: Behind the grandstand at the Olympic swimming pool is a less glamorous warmup pool that you won't see on TV. Wreathed by potted palms and patio chairs, redolent of chlorine, surrounded on all sides by shivering swimmers, it resembles in every detail the pool beneath the Holidome at the Holiday Inn in South Bend, Indiana. A press pass is not required for access -- you need only show a room key. Or Ian Thorpe's mother telling him he must wait half an hour after eating before he swims the 400-meter freestyle. Or Pieter van den Hoogenband and Megan Quann playing Marco Polo in the deep end. Or Inge de Bruijn, draped across a deck chair, reading a Danielle Steel paperback. When Eric Moussambini of Equatorial Guinea nearly drowned while swimming a 100-meter freestyle heat in 1:52.72 -- or more than 1:04 slower than the world record -- he did so in the big pool, before a capacity crowd. Moussambini swam as so many of us do: His head was completely above water at all times, yet he turned it from side to side in a heartbreaking pantomime of champion swimmers. Moussambini, you see, has only been swimming since January. He trained for the Olympics in a 20-meter hotel pool near his hometown of Molabu. And that's the trouble with Olympic swimming: It must take place, by definition, in an "Olympic-sized" pool. Those of us who did our training under the Holidomes of a hundred Holiday Inns on family vacations in the American Midwest -- those of us who can execute a perfect cannonball, who can pick quarters off the floor of the deep end, who can leap from the deck and catch a waterlogged Nerf football thrown to the center of any hotel pool -- we are sadly neglected at the Games. The Olympics have no use for our talents. In a 20-Meter Hotel Pool Freestyle Free-For-All, I promise I could beat the Thorpedo. Sports Illustrated senior writer Steve Rushin is in Sydney covering the Olympics for the magazine and CNNSI.com. Check back to read his commentary from Down Under.
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