I freely admit that having both of my main characters be Olympic swimmers is a form of wish fulfillment on my part.
Before you ask, yes , I was a competitive swimmer right up to high school; and, no, I have never competed beyond the regional meets I attended before hanging up my goggles for good before my freshmen year. I remain a huge fan of the sport, though, having been hooked initially by the amazing swimmers who participated in the 1984 Los Angeles Games and solidified by their repeated feats at the 1988 Games. Living in the States allowed me to watch the LA Games in near real-time, though I missed a portion of the first few days while attending Scout Camp that summer (talk about poor timing!).
I was home in time that summer to watch Greg Louganis score his perfect ten, and though diving is not in my wheelhouse, I will admit to possibly including a character in a future novel that got into the sport because of him. (If you’ve never seen Greg in action, it is poetry in motion and worth a few minutes spelunking through YouTube.)
I still swim today, more for fitness than anything else; the pandemic put a bit of a crimp in my regular workouts, though, so I’ve shifted more toward what my swim coach used to euphemistically call “dryland” workouts — in this case, running. While I still can reach that Zen-like peace that appears when you are in the zone during a workout, there is just something so amazing about gliding through the water, absorbed in the moment that I can’t replicate outside of the pool. More than one thorny plot point was resolved during a long set, though in fairness, the entire arc of the Sean Colbeth series became apparent as I slogged through a rather hilly 10K course two years ago.
It’s about the only thing that kept me sane in the heat.