This swim meet has a long history and to this day is sought after by many clubs even outside the province of Quebec.
As a young 12-year-old boy, the national anthem blasting in the speakers, the loud music during the warm ups, the warm down pool which smelled of steamed hot dogs, really impressed me and made me feel like I was at a meet comparable to the Olympics. The best swimmers in my club and in the province were always there and as I looked up to them, it made me want to swim as fast as them!
I also remember swearing to myself that I had to learn to speak English, as the fast Montreal boys of my age, always gave me the impression of talking about and making fun of me in English! Oh, how I wanted to swim faster than them to show them!
I remember in 1985, on my way from Quebec City to Pointe-Claire, how in the back of my mom’s van, I laid down and recalled as much as I could from my past. I wanted to review as many memories as I could, going backward in time. I’m sharing this as I feel like it had something to do with me being able to get in the zone at that first Pointe-Claire meet. The amount of concentration I experienced during that recollection, affected my state of mind and prepped me to swim in Flow.
These meet always started with the distance events on the Friday afternoon. I was fast enough that I would qualify in pretty much all my races, for the finals. Which meant that I swam up to 16 races over the weekend.
My races had all the characteristics of Flow, but at the time I didn’t really know what Flow was. All I knew was that in some races I had they eye of the tiger.
I remember watching Paul Sekula wearing a parka and mittens between his races and doing the same at later meets. I also remember watching Stephanie Shewchuk (I had a huge crush on her) swimming with such a fast stroke rate that she seemed to have unlimited energy at her disposal. I even remember swimming a 200 IM next to Victor Davis at that meet!
Watching all these super swimmers really fired me up every time. I wanted so bad to be like one of them that I was prepared to lay it all out in the pool without concerns for my safety or potential failure.
I remember one particular experience in the final of the 100 back in the shallow end of the pool (I was 14 at the time), I had just out touched Robert Braknis and he was pissed. I had never heard of him before but he had definitely given me a great fight in the race. On my way to the swim down pool, I saw him, quite unhappy, talking with his coach, Lois Daigneault and something really struck me. In his eyes I could see that it was not going to be the last time I have to fight him, that he was really hungry to win.
This was a strange feeling for me as I didn’t care that much about winning. I cared, but it was more important for me to race with the eye of the tiger than winning.
One thing that all these meets at Pointe-Claire had in common was the Sunday night feeling. Every time, on the Sunday evening as the last races took place, I would have some sort of blues, a kind of little depression. It was like I had been really high and now I was going back to my normal state. I’ve come to learn since, that this is quite typical after having been in Flow for some time.
0 Comments