#swimming things

[squidsinashirt]

And they say I don’t like to fly fast 🙂‍↔️

Resistance is futile 🐠 firing up the secret pool because somebody complained it was splashing them.

[yoursleepdemon]

Does anyone else really like the smell of chlorine? Like I catch I whiff of it and I fell like my problems go away. Maybe it's just cuz I'm a swimmer (synchronized if you care) and basically live off it, but when I smell it I'm public it just makes me feel, safe ig?

Idk what it is. I kinda wish I had a chlorine perfume, even tho I smell like it lots anyway.

[washingtoncapricorns]

Something touched my foot in the water. The ocean is scary as fuck. I now understand why I switched from open water swimming to the pool.

[squidsinashirt]

Gordon, you've been banned from mainstream competition because of the tech in your spine. Doesn't that make something like the Enhanced Games the perfect fit for you?

I can understand this question, it’s a fair one.

I’d love to compete again. Honestly, at one point there was just about nothing I wouldn’t have done to be able to jump back into the competitive pool and be back where I was. I’ll never not love swimming 🐠

But no. I’d never compete in something like the Enhanced Games. Even being banned from mainstream comps.

My spinal reconstruction wasn't designed to me a better athlete, it was designed to make me functional again, but given that it was the first of it’s kind, there’s really no way to prove it didn’t inadvertently do that. I’m fast enough these days that I could challenge my own record, and if I beat it, I’d be a huge personal victory for everything I went through in recovery after the ‘foil. But y’know, it’s not about me.

If I win, the question is gonna be is it because I’m older, physically stronger, better technique… or is it because of the tech that keeps me upright? I don’t think it is, but nobody can answer that for certain, not even me, so… and I wouldn’t want anyone I’m competing against to feel they were being cheated.

And that’s fair enough to me, even if I struggled with it to begin with because hey, swimming competitively was my life for so long. It actually answers why I don’t believe in competitions like the Enhanced Games too.

Sport, at least the way I've always understood it, is about finding out what you can achieve through discipline, training, skill, and determination. It's about testing yourself against other people who have made the same commitment. The stopwatch, the finish line, the splits…those things only mean something if everyone agrees on the same challenge. Once the question becomes "who has the most effective enhancement programme?" I'm not sure that's the same challenge anymore 🤷‍♂️

If someone wins because they trained harder, executed better, or showed more grit under pressure, I can respect that even if I lose. If the deciding factor is whose enhancement was more effective, then personally, I'm no longer interested in the result.

If others want to explore that kind of competition, that's a debate for them to have. But it isn’t what I believe sport to be. The whole reason I fell in love with the pool in the first place was because it was one of the few places where effort mattered, and I still believe that.

And I really look forward to my record getting broken one day by someone that also believes in the same thing. That has set themself the same challenge, and has eyed up what I achieved, and decided they’re going to put in the work and do better. Because that is what good swimming is about ✌🏻

[squidsinashirt]

😌✌🏻🦋

[squidsinashirt]

Do you remember when you started swimming properly?

‘Properly’ as in I didn’t sink, or ‘properly’ as in competing? 😂

I’ve swam really as long as I can remember, I went pretty young because I loved it. I can remember Mom teaching me, and having swim as part of gym class at school.

I started with the swim club and doing galas when I was almost seven? Nothing too serious, one a month and swim club twice a week y’know? Honestly, I think Mom was just happy it let me burn off energy 🙂‍↔️

Started to get a little more competitive about it after I turned eight (which is a pretty common age to start seeing kids getting into more training).

Started to swim the ‘fly properly at that point too, because they actually allowed me to compete at the open meets, and decided it was my favourite because it looked the coolest and was the most fun to do!

But really, I was just happy if I was in the water 🐠

[squidsinashirt]

Please let us see baby Gordon winning his medal 🥹🥇

You do know there’s entire vids of baby Gordo winning his medal on t’internet? Here is a screengrab of such a video. How to live with your teenage face plastered across the global web 🙂‍↔️

Just as well he stopped crying for five minutes to accept it 😏 tiny baby-faced fish 🐠

[squidsinashirt]