The Olympics!

For the past several days my wife and I have been enjoying watching the Olympics. Yesterday we got into a discussion of how certain sports had only one event, you either win a medal or you go home with nothing. However, in swimming, they have like 30 chances to win a gold medal. It's like getting to go to the arcade with a roll of quarters! Game over? Nah! Try again! This discussion led me to do an internet search related to Olympic swimming and I came across a great story from the Sydney games back in 2000. This, my friends, is Eric Moussambani...

"Eric the Eel" is from Equatorial Guinea, a tiny sliver of a nation on the Atlantic coast of Africa. Prior to 2000, Equatorial Guinea was not known for it's swimmers, mostly because in the whole country there are a total of two swimming pools. That's right, only TWO swimming pools! Luckily, the Olympics has a wild card drawing of sorts to allow developing countries that would otherwise not qualify to participate to have a spot in the games. Due to this excellent rule, Mr. Moussambani would represent his country in the 100m freestyle.

Only eight months prior to the games Eric began training in a "less than Olympic size" hotel swimming pool. Before arriving in Sydney he had not even seen an Olympic pool. Needless to say, swimming all 100m at the same time was quite a tall order for Eric. There were two other competitors in his heat of the 100m, but in a bizarre turn of events, both of them had a false start, which disqualified them from the heat. This meant the pride of Equatorial Guinea was the default winner of the heat and would just have to solo swim the 100m to win. I will let you view the video to see this great Olympic moment. Make sure you keep an eye on the world record time on the left and Eric's time on the right. Both hilarious and inspiring in my opinion.