Water is elemental, it’s what we’re made of, what we can’t live
within or without. Trying to defi ne what swimming means
to me is like looking at a shell sitting in a few feet of clear,
still water. There it is, in sharp focus, but once I reach for it,
breaking the surface, the ripples refract the shell. It becomes
fi ve shells, twenty- fi ve shells, some smaller, some larger, and I
blindly feel for what I saw perfectly before trying to grasp it.
QUITTING
Say I’m swimming with people, in the ocean, a pool, or a lake,
and one of them knows about my history as a swimmer, and
remarks to the others, “Leanne’s an Olympic swimmer.” I’ll
protest: “No, no, I only went as far as the Olympic trials—
I didn’t go to the Olympics.” But the boast bobs up like a
balloon, bright and curious to some, wistful and exposed
to me.
When pressed, it is usually enough to say I went to the
1988 and 1992 Canadian Olympic trials. That nationally, I
was ranked eighth once, briefl y. I explain that to go to the
Olympics you have to fi nish fi rst or second at the trials.
This is where the conversations end. After paddling around
we wade into the shallows or hoist ourselves up onto the
boat or the dock, and the conversation turns toward food,
or gossip.
I don’t have vivid memories of the Olympic trials, or of
winning medals; I barely remember quitting the fi rst time, in
1989, or how I told Mitch, my coach. It would have probably
been at an evening practice. On the deck, after, when the other
swimmers had gone to change. I would have been standing
there in my suit with my duffel bag and towel. He would have
said something like “What’s up?” And then I would have said
it. Said my family was moving to the countryside, said I did
not want to live with another family in order to train— so, I
said, I had decided to quit.
I might have done it while icing my knees. Freestylers,
backstrokers, and butterflyers usually have shoulder problems,
but most breaststrokers have knee problems, advised to ice
regularly and take eight aspirin a day. After workouts and races,
I would sit in the bleachers with a styrofoam cup of frozen
water, rolling the flat ice against the insides of my knees until
they turned bright pink and lost all feeling. I’d peel the cup
back from the edges so it wouldn’t squeak against the numb
skin. The ice would become slick, contouring as it melted.
But I don’t remember talking to him. I do remember talking
to Dawn, the assistant coach, the next morning. Mitch
wasn’t on deck. We sat in two plastic folding chairs by the side
of the pool, watching the team practice. Dawn told me Mitch
was angry. She asked me what I was going to do. I think I said
take up piano and study art, knowing she wouldn’t get it.
Knowing maybe even I didn’t get it. I remember looking out at
the swimmers in the lanes, heading into the hard main set, and
thinking: I’ve crossed the line. I don’t have to do that anymore.
I remember sitting there and feeling relieved.
Mitch once told me: “You’re going to be great.” Then
Dawn told me: “Mitch doesn’t want to talk to you.”
When you’re a swimmer, coaches stand above you, over
you. You look up to them, are vulnerable, naked and wet in
front of them. Coaches see you weak, they weaken you, they
have your trust, you do what they say. The relationship is
guardian, father, mother, boss, mentor, jailer, doctor, shrink,
and teacher. My heart broke.
My grandfather was a bomber pilot in the Second World War.
Though he lived into his late eighties, he’s frozen in my mind
as the young man in a photo, wearing a fl ight suit and goggles,
grinning next to a B-25 Mitchell. The image that comes to
mind when I think of my mother is a snapshot of her, taken
around 1983, sitting on her bed dressed in work clothes: silk
shirt, trousers, long necklace, smiling. If I think of my dad,
he’s in our dining room, clapping and singing along to “The
Gambler” by Kenny Rogers. The default image I have of myself
is a photo: me, ten, standing next to the ladder at Cawthra
Park pool in a blue bathing suit, knees clenched, trying to
catch my breath.
I’ve defined myself, privately and abstractly, by my brief,
intense years as an athlete, a swimmer. I practiced five or six
hours a day, six days a week, eating and sleeping as much as
possible in between. Weekends were spent either training or
competing. I wasn’t the best; I was relatively fast. I trained, ate,
traveled, and showered with the best in the country, but wasn’t
the best; I was pretty good.
I liked how hard swimming at that level was— that I could do
something diffi cult and unusual. Liked knowing my discipline
would be recognized, respected, that I might not be able to
say the right things or fi t in, but I could do something well.
I wanted to believe that I was talented; being fast was proof.
Though I loved racing, the idea of fastest, of number one, of
the Olympics, didn’t motivate me.
I still dream of practice, of races, coaches and blurry
competitors. I’m drawn to swimming pools, all swimming
pools, no matter how small or murky. When I swim now, I
step into the water as though absentmindedly touching a scar.
My recreational laps are phantoms of my competitive races.
BYRON
I e-mail one of my old coaches, Byron MacDonald, and ask
to sit in on a morning practice at the University of Toronto
pool. When I arrive, Byron and his assistant coach, Linda,
are standing at the deep end, each holding a photocopy of
the workout. They look exactly as I remember them. Byron still
has a contained Roy Scheider swagger. Linda’s no-bullshit
poker face is still quick to laugh.
The pool looks the same too. It has an odd palette for a
swimming pool: orange, brown, and beige, with bursts of varsity
blue on the pennants, the deck, and the seven letters of
TO RO N TO spaced evenly between each of the eight
lanes. When I swam with Byron, I’d wonder what practice was
like from on deck, what it felt to be warm and dry up there, in
sneakers and shorts. I’d always been curious about the tedium
a coach might experience, while the rest of us, in the water,
pushed against the thousands of meters of warm-up, main sets,
and warm- down. Time passes with precision in a workout,
every minute— every second— is felt and accounted for. In
other words, time passes slowly.
I’m surprised, then, watching practice from the deck, to
find it pass quickly.
I don’t glance at the clock for the first forty minutes.
Watching Byron’s swimmers combing through the water keeps
me in a hypnotic focus. Byron stands beside me and describes
the trajectory of a few swimmers’ careers: one is the team’s best
hope for placement on the Canadian Olympic team; another
is struggling with an eating disorder; one boy, watching the
workout, is sidelined by a broken foot. Between sets Byron
announces my presence on the deck, explaining that “Leanne
swam with us a couple of years ago.” I do a quick calculation
in my head. It’s been exactly twenty years, to the month.
Byron has replaced the analog pace clocks, with their four,
multicolored sweeping hands, with small, digital ones that
perch in the corners of the pool. Temporal surveillance
cameras. He still says things like “Let’s go on the top” or
“Everyone in the water on the top,” referring to the red hand
of the clock reaching the number 60 at the top of the face.
His expressions jolt me back into the fi rm macro- grip on
time I had as swimmer. The ability to make still lifes out of
tenths of seconds.
As we watch the team, Byron directs my attention to one
swimmer, a boy whose turns are remarkable. Linda corrects a
girl’s backstroke, explaining that she needs to lead with her
shoulder not her hand, and I remember being the recipient of
that kind of attention, knowing there was perfection to trace
and retrace, unwavering details of technical precision that, on
good days, made practice a sharpening, rather than the unrave
ling it usually felt like to me. I loved drills best, when I could
feel the water in centimeters and so understand how tiny
adjustments and angles added up and propelled my body more
effi ciently. We’d move slowly up and down the pool, sculling
with only our hands and wrists, or swim backstroke pointing
to the ceiling with one hand and pausing for the other
hand to catch up. I liked the idea of bodies as hydrodynamic,
the eddies and ripples, the repetition, the needlepoints of
swimming.
Byron takes me through the changes the sport has
undergone in the past twenty years. He illustrates each
detail— technical suits, track blocks, false- start rules— with
trivia- studded anecdotes. He furnishes last names and years,
recounts heartbreaking stories of disqualifi cations and losses,
adds gossip, footnotes inventions and media coverage with a
born storyteller’s delivery. I ask him if anyone’s ever made a
pun on his name and that of Lord Byron, the water- loving
poet and swimmer of the Hellespont. He laughs and says no,
that maybe the only appropriate time to have done it was when
he competed for Canada at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
SWIMMING STUDIES
FINALS
On a wet November afternoon, I drive my rented Ford Focus
to the Etobicoke Olympium to watch the fi nals of a national
swim meet.
The easiest way to describe the insular, clammy, circumscribed,
and largely underexposed world of competitive swimming is to
explain what fi nals are like.
I sit with Linda and Byron, high in the wooden bleachers.
The waffl ed rows of seating look as they did twenty years ago:
a mess, like the open drawers of a giant chest, sloppy with duffel
bags, candy- colored towels, damp swimmers, perspiring
coaches, heat sheets, papers, and clothes. And food. Two swimmers
eat raw vegetables from a cardboard box of produce. A
coach peels an orange. A girl crams gorp into her mouth while
a boy unwraps a foil package, cuts a section of chocolate- chip
banana bread with a plastic knife, and chews it thoughtfully.
The benches are strewn with granola bar wrappers and empty
water bottles. Another boy drinks a fresh muddy- brown protein
shake, the mini- blender blades dripping onto his feet.
Bright blue and green sports drinks are stuffed into sneakers
atop algebra textbooks, iPads and iPods, and T-shirts. Talking
T-shirts. They have the testosterone tone of action- movie trailers,
amped up and motivational. Directly in front of me, the
backs of three swimmers advise me to SEE THE INVISIBLE /
FEEL THE INTANGIBLE / ACHIEVE THE IMPOSSIBLE;
RISE TO THE CHALLENGE; IN ORDER TO IMPROVE,
ATTEMPT THE IMPOSSIBLE. Farther down the bleachers, a
fourth reassures me that A CHAMPION NEVER STANDS
ON THE PODIUM ALONE.
It is a long- course (LC) meet, which means the races are swum
in fi fty meters rather than twenty- fi ve, the length of most
Canadian community pools. Competitions held in twentyfi
ve- meter or twenty- fi ve- yard pools are referred to as shortcourse
(SC).
The swimming calendar has two seasons. The SC, from
September to March, and the LC, from April to August.
Both seasons culminate in national- level meets like this one,
open to all ages, with morning preliminary heats and evening
fi nals. Minimum qualifying times are posted by Swimming
Canada, the national governing body of competitive swimming.
These are usually the thirty- sixth- place time in each
event from the previous year’s national championship.
Because of these time standards— provincial, national, and
international— swimmers’ goals are temporal and their efforts
interior rather than adversarial or gladiatorial. The sport is
judged by the indifferent clock.
When I swam, I always saw familiar faces in my heats, but
I knew them by their times— in descending tenths and hundredths
of seconds— as much as by their names.
This is what a pool, outfitted for a big meet, looks like:
At either end of each of the eight lanes of a long- course
pool is a starting block. (Some Olympic- standard pools have
ten lanes, but the races use only the middle eight of those ten.)
All races over fi fty meters start from the same end. The blocks
are fi tted with an angled back panel where a swimmer can rest
one foot higher than the other, for extra traction during the
start.
Each block holds an individual speaker that transmits the
sound of the starting horn evenly. The blocks are also fi tted
with a light that flashes when the horn sounds, for the hearing-
impaired. (Since light moves faster than sound, some swimmers
choose to react to the light.)
Wired to the block are two timing plungers, coiled cords
synched with the starting horn, used as backup if the swimmer
has a soft fi nish (not exerting enough pressure at the wall to
register a time) or if the touchpads fail. These are started electronically
and stopped manually by two of three offi cials who
are stationed behind each block. The third offi cial times the
race manually with a stopwatch.
The officials, required to dress in head-to-toe white, are
volunteers. They are parents of swimmers, parents of former
swimmers, or former swimmers themselves. During races, the
area around and behind each block is understood to be a place
of private focus— an invisible box thick with tension. Even
though the timers and offi cials share it, the swimmers ignore
them or treat them with minimal politesse.
In the pool, affi xed to the wall at the ends of each lane are
wide yellow panels, bisected vertically by a black stripe. These
are pressure- sensitive touchpads, used to make the most accurate
record of a swimmer’s fi nish. The lanes are demarcated by lane
ropes: buoyant plastic discs, strung together along a taut wire.
The three middle lane ropes, marking lanes four and fi ve, are
strung with yellow discs. This is to indicate where the two fastest
qualifi ers swim— a practice developed to help television audiences
recognize those lanes. Lane ropes are always a solid color
fi ve meters from either end, and at fi fteen meters from each wall
are marked in red. Swimmers must surface after turns and starts
before or at the mark, or they will be disqualifi ed. A thin rope is
strung across the width of the pool to further judge this rule. Also
strung across the pool, fi ve meters from each end, are backstroke
fl ags. These festive plastic triangles (which remind me of usedcar
lots) are used by backstrokers to gauge turns and finishes.
Near the competition pool, there is usually a warm- down pool,
often the diving tank, where swimmers do relaxed laps after races
in order to keep lactic acid from building up.
After the Canadian national anthem is played and the bagpipeled
officials are paraded onto deck, the consolation, or B, final
of the women’s 100m breaststroke is swum. These women had
the ninth through sixteenth fastest times from heats. As they
climb out of the water, eight more women are introduced. This
is the A fi nal, the fi rst through eighth fastest qualifi ers. The
women are marched along the deck to thumping pop music, in
this case “Raise Your Glass” by Pink. They all wear caps and
goggles, and some, a second cap over their goggle straps. Their
team logo is printed on both sides, and on occasion, the
swimmer’s last name. They wear baggy variations on tracksuits,
parkas, and team uniforms; towels slung over their shoulders,
hoods up, earbuds inserted. Their feet are shod in sneakers,
deck sandals, fl ip- fl ops, or UGGs, or are bare. Behind the
blocks, the women jump up and down, pointing their toes.
They stretch their legs over the blocks, compulsively adjust and
readjust their caps and goggles, pummel their thighs with fi sts,
fl ing arms back and across, back and across their bodies, suckle
water bottles, adjust their blocks, and pull on the straps of their
tight competition suits. They are twitching, readying.
The woman with the fastest time after preliminary heats
occupies lane four. Second- fastest is in lane fi ve, third in lane
three. The rest, in descending order, are in lanes six, two, seven,
one, and fi nally, eight. This placement accounts for the
inverted-V formation that typically occurs during a race. A
swimmer who leads from lane one, two, seven, or eight is often
called “outside smoke.”
The meet official announces each swimmer’s name, beginning
with lane one. The referee will indicate, with a few short
blasts of a whistle, that the swimmers must remove their shoes
and clothing. At this point the swimmers stretch, rotate their
arms, waggle their heads, bend to the pool and splash water
onto themselves. Some stand still, hands on hips. A long whistle
indicates that the swimmers are to approach and step onto
the starting blocks. The crowd settles into silence. Over the
microphone the starter intones, “Take your mark—” and the
swimmers bend and freeze with at least one foot touching
the front of the block.
Here is a composite sketch of each tensed figure: In lane one is
an eighteen- year- old vegetarian who keeps spiders as pets. Her
mother died of cancer when she was twelve. Lane two, age
seventeen, suffers from severe allergies and chronic eczema but
is wary of using antihistamines and topical steroids because of
random drug testing. It is lane three’s nineteenth birthday, but
her boyfriend, who goes to university in Alberta, has not
remembered. Her little brother’s best friend— who developed
a crush on her after she pointed at a houseplant and said,
“What is this? Corn?”— wished her a happy birthday as she
walked by him on the way to the ladies’ locker room, but she
did not hear him. Lane four, age seventeen, knows that a
coach from the University of Michigan is in the stands hoping
to recruit her, and can’t stop her hands from shaking. Lane five,
nineteen, has been yawning. This is alarming because it usually
means she will have a bad race. Lane six, also nineteen, chose a
Snickers over a PowerBar half an hour before the race, and
some caramel is stuck in an upper left molar. She was worrying
it with her tongue during the march but has since forgotten it
in a tunnel of concentration. She silently repeats Okay, okay,
okay to herself. Lane seven’s parents are going through a
divorce. Last weekend when her father came to pick up her
two little brothers, he brought his new girlfriend, Lorraine.
Her mother went batshit when she saw Lorraine get out of the
car, and ran out of the house toward her, screaming obscenities
and then yanking down Lorraine’s yellow strapless top. Her
father kept saying calmly, “Lorr, get back in the car.” Lane
seven watched all of this unfold from her bedroom window.
She is fifteen. Lane eight visualizes a white blankness; she
hears deck noise as if through a cloud of cotton balls, having
tried the sequence of meditation exercises her stepfather taught
her, just before the race. She is not speaking to her teammate
in lane four, since lane four made out with her ex-boyfriend at
a party two weekends ago. She is seventeen.
When the swimmers are perfectly still, the starter’s horn makes
a loud bleep. In unison, the swimmers launch themselves over
the water into something that resembles a tiny midair push-up,
followed by a small fl ex at their hips, and enter the water. Lane
fi ve, the yawner, has the best start, hitting the water just ahead
of the fi eld. In the mid- 1990s, the Fédération Internationale
de Natation (or FINA, the international governing body of
swimming) established a zero- tolerance false- start rule. If
someone in the race starts before the gun, the race proceeds
and the disqualifi cation occurs at the finish, announced over
the loudspeaker.
The race, two lengths of the fifty- meter pool, is considered
a sprint. Lane five leads, but at the fi fty- meter mark— the
split— she is outtouched by lane three. Lane three has a strong
turn, with a powerful kick.
Here is what it sounds like to lane three at the wall: A low
thump as her hands hit the touchpad. Brief cheering at an
intake of breath, collapsing into bubbles as her head, aligned
and steady, dips back and under again at the turn. This is followed
immediately by quiet. There is a rippling during the
long stroke of her underwater pullout, a tight, thin sigh of
effort, a gruff exhalation of air, a grunt at the dolphin kick.
As her head breaks the surface, the roar of the crowd is,
with each breath, loud then quiet, loud then quiet; a chorus of
warbled pops and splashings bursts against the sides of her cap.
The water ahead is smooth and the view is low glassy horizon.
Lane four has a grasp of her periphery, but ignores it. Lane
fi ve and three are even with her, if not just ahead. Lane four
blocks a sinking feeling and starts kicking harder. Between
strokes, each swimmer can catch the deep bass of the announcer
calling the race over the cheering of the crowd. What they don’t
hear is that lane eight is creeping up in the last twenty- fi ve
meters, and is now even with lane four.
The last ten or fifteen meters are the most painful, physically
and mentally. Muscles flood with lactic acid. Strokes
shorten, weaken, churn, and find no purchase. It’s a terrible,
desperate feeling, where the results of training are determined.
Not enough cardio and your entire body fails, not enough
drills and your stroke slips, not enough strength training and
muscles burn like paper curling in flames.
Lane three touches first, followed by lane four, just barely
outtouching lane eight, in third place by two- hundredths of a
second. The swimmers turn, heaving, to look at the big scoreboard
that displays each lane’s time. When lane eight sees her
third- place finish she smashes her palm into the yellow wall.
Lane five is fourth, followed by six, seven, two, and one.
Lane three pulls off her cap and tosses it onto the deck,
then dips her head back to feel the cool water on her head. A
whistle is blown. The swimmers haul themselves out of the
pool, gather their towels and clothes. Some head for the warmdown
pool, others to their coaches.
During the medal ceremony, a woman in a tight black cocktail
dress and red heels hands each swimmer a cellophane- wrapped
rose, places a medal over her wet head, shakes her right hand.
Then each medalist turns to the other two. Lane four hesitates
before offering her hand to lane eight. Lane eight shakes it,
then, stepping off the podium, wipes her palm on her thigh.