Swimmers clean up

This morning, Dennis and I caught a bus to watch the final session of the swimming events. Because both of us grew up swimming, we could not pass on the opportunity to see a world class swim meet live. The swimming venue is probably about a half mile as the crow flies, but it took almost 20 minutes to get there because of the bus rout. On the way over, we met a Brazilian swimmer who goes to school and swims for Arizona.

Once at the venue, we followed the swimmers into the athlete section. I am not sure we were supposed to get in without paying for a ticket (since that was not our sport venue), but we were able to get into the stands without a problem. We sat with the US Swim Team and they were louder than most fans at a football game.

The US team cleaned up big time winning a number of medals. The crowd was really into it and the swimmers were very friendly (albeit a bit curious about who we were and why we were in the athlete section) to us. Dennis and I wound up sitting next to Ava Ohlgren who is an NCAA champion in the 400IM from Auburn (sorry all my in-laws from Georgia!). Ava had just finished a successful Pan Ams with a win in the 200 Free two days ago and wanted to learn more about pentathlon.

Here are some videos from this morning:

This is the 400 Medley Relay, which the US won while setting a new Pan Am record.



And this is the 50 Free. Gary Hall is in lane 7, but the Brazilians went 1-2 and the crowd went crazy. The guy who won swims in the US for Auburn.