What . . .

I watched the finals today. I am not sure what I saw. There was Brian, getting ready, fingertips on the board, and suddenly he tipped forward into the water like a lump. Initially we assumed a false-start, but it was just seconds before people got a bad feeling. The Chinese swimmer and the English swimmer dove in after him. He was already blue when they threw him up on the edge of the pool. There was an immense effort at resuscitation.

Imagine that. The cameras are rolling and the whole world is watching, and you are doing CPR on the greatest swimmer of all time. I can't imagine the pressure. He started twitching. They backed off all smiles. That is when he attacked.

The world watched as Brian Clades bit into the EMT's neck and ripped his throat wide open. The broadcasters cut live footage and switched to an unprepared camera crew covering well . . . nothing. We didn't hear any other reports for tonight. I thought for sure the media would claw onto that story and we'd hear about nothing else for the next two weeks.

I hope it goes that way.

Anyway I am just bummed out about it. I don't know how long I have been a fan of Brian. I caught the last race during the national championships where he killed the World Record so I guess it's been about a year. I hate to think I've wasted that year anticipating the Summer Olympics so I could watch the whole thing, beginning to end, and root for Brian the whole way. I envisioned all the other countries digging up their best NexGens to take him on, and he destroys all of them in the pool.

I don't swim, that's the funny part. I'm not scared of water, but I am scared of competing in water. I just have this fear that if I start breathing heavily during a swim, I would get the order of breathe/exhale switched, exhale into the air, and then take a breath underwater and POW! Corpsed. Deep water. I don't like deep water. If I can't touch the bottom I don't spend a lot of time accepting it, I just move into the shallow end.

Brian. May you be okay. I hope they give a report on him soon. I can't find anything on the Internet that is solid.