"Competing Until the Very End

 Masters Swimmer David Gregg Dies at 71"

 

By JOHN FEINSTEIN

AOL Exclusive

2/17/04

 

          An athlete died Sunday. His death wasn't reported in your local newspaper, nor was there a montage of his career highlights on ESPN or anyplace else. The sports world was focused--properly--over the weekend on Alex Rodriguez and Dale Earnhardt Jr. and John Daly.

          David Gregg was a 71-year-old Masters swimmer. He loved meets like the one that was held on Sunday at The Riverside Wellness Center, just outside of Richmond for the same reasons that all of us who take part in Masters swimming do: it gave him a chance to test himself, to see if his workouts were producing the sort of results he wanted to see. It also gave him a chance to see friends, some he knew well, some he knew to say hello to, all of whom he shared a bond with because on a Sunday morning in  February this was the place we all had chosen to be for a few hours.

          He swam for Fairfax Masters, a team in northern Virginia that works out not far from where he lived in Arlington. He had come to competitive swimming relatively late in life after bad knees forced him to give up skiing, his first love athletically. Masters swimmers come in all shapes, sizes and age categories. The ones who receive the most attention in the swimming magazines and around pool decks are often ex-Olympians or near Olympians and past national champions who still get off on the buzz of competition. But they are also middle-aged men and women like me who swam once, gave it up for years and then went back to it because they needed to exercise or, in my case, because a doctor asked a question on the eve of my son's first birthday: "You have any interest at all in seeing your son grow up?"

          There are a handful of Masters swimmers who are breath-taking to watch. Soon after I began swimming again, I was fortunate enough to join a team with a fabulous name--The Ancient Mariners--and some remarkable swimmers. Clay Britt made the Olympic team that didn't get to go to Moscow in 1980. Wally Dicks never became a star at Indiana, but in 2000, at the age of 38, he became the oldest man in history to qualify for the Olympic Trials when he made the cutoff for the 100 breastroke. There are others. Some of the times being cranked out by swimmers in their 40s, 50s and 60s are absolutely eye-popping if you understand the sport.

          Most Masters swimmers though are more like David Gregg. They swim for the exercise and the camraderie. They know, deep down, that the only person really paying attention to their swims and their times is them. That doesn't mean friends and teammates don't gather on deck to root you on during a meet, but very few really understand what a good swim for you is as opposed to a bad swim. One of the first lessons one learns in Masters swimming is that when someone comes up to you and says, "nice swim," you don't shake your head and explain that you went a second faster last month. You just say thanks. You also learn to stay away from those who don't understand that rule because, much like golfers who want to walk you through everything that went wrong with their round, swimmers who need to break down their starts, turns and finish, can go on forever.

          The essence of Masters swimming was perhaps best explained by my friend John Craig, who swam at Harvard in the 1970s and, until recently, held the world record in the 45-49 year old age group in swimming's toughest event, the 200 meter butterfly. "A Masters swim meet is like a four or five hour social with some swimming thrown in along the way," John once said. "I want to swim well, in fact I get angry when I don't swim up to my expectations, but I almost always leave a meet in a good mood because I've enjoyed the time I've spent talking to the other swimmers."

          Like most cultures, Masters swimming has a language of its own, one that makes conversations among those who take part, essentially off-limits to those who don't. My wife rolls her eyes as if to say, "you must be kidding," when I ask her if she wants to go to a Masters swimming party. Of course I did the exact same thing to her years ago when she asked me if I wanted to go to parties with her running friends. Masters swimming is NOT like real swimming. Michael Phelps doesn't lose workout time because  of sick kids or his job or because his chronically cranky back (shoulder, knees, take-your-pick) is acting up. He has never worked out in a rec pool on the road next to an aerobics class and had an instructor say to him, "could you stop swimming that (butterfly) stroke, some of the ladies are complaining because you are getting their hair wet."  Seriously, it happens. Or been told there are no lane lines in the 87-degree pool because the lifeguards don't want to go to the trouble of putting them in the pool.

          David Gregg wasn't someone I knew well. But he was someone I saw at almost every Masters swim meet I went to, always friendly, frequently asking me about whatever was the current topic in sports. On Sunday, I encountered him soon after warm-up and his first question was, "how's the shoulder?" We had talked two weeks earlier at another meet and I had mentioned that my right shoulder had been bothering me for a while. He had explained he had just spent several months rehabbing one of his shoulders and felt 100 percent better. "Remind me and I'll give you the name of the person I went to," he said.

          Susan Ellis, who swims for Fairfax Masters along with her husband Brian, told me Sunday night that David often went out of his way to help people out. “We had one woman on our team who was told she couldn’t drive anymore,” Susan said. “She thought she was going to have to give up swimming. David volunteered to drive her to and from practice so she could keep on coming.”

          David had sent Susan an e-mail the day after the meet two weeks ago. “He always e-mailed me his results if I wasn’t at a meet,” she said. The one on February 2nd reported that he had gone a personal best 4:06 in the 200 freestyle, breaking the Fairfax team record in his age group. “I know with my shoulder feeling good again I can go at least 10 seconds faster,” he had written. That was typical Masters swimmer talk. Regardless of your age, you are always convinced you can go faster.

          On Sunday, I told David my shoulder felt a lot better than it had and he shook his head and said his was bothering him again. "Old age is a pain," he said, laughing.

          There were only a handful of us from the Washington area who had made the drive down I-95 for the meet. As is often the case when you are away from home, those of us from DC congregated in one place, chattering on about workouts and times and who wasn't there and why. During the brief mid-meet break, David walked over and sat down with me and with Tim Timmons, who works in the Pentagon when he isn't working on his backstroke or freestyle.

          “How’s your meet going,” I asked casually.

          Davis shook his head. “Not well at all,” he said. “My shoulder hurts and my lungs don’t feel great. I”m going to swim breastroke during the 200 freestyle because I missed my breastroke heat.”

          The shoulder complaint wasn’t unusual but, looking back, maybe I should have said more about his comment about the lungs than, “are you sure you’re okay?”
          “I’m fine,” he said. “If I have a bad time in the breastroke, I may call it a day.” He smiled. “Can’t swim fast all the time can you?”

          I could attest to that. I was still sulking about my 100 freestyle and less-than-thrilled with my 50 fly. If I didn’t swim a decent 100 fly  the meet--other than the social aspects--was going to be a failure for me.

          David went off to swim. Timmons and I resumed our conversation about the future of The Air Force Academy. I remember noting that David was swimming breastroke and thus well behind the others in his heat, all of whom were swimming freestyle. I must have looked away because the next thing I saw was several people pulling David out of the pool. He had finished his race and apparently collapsed as he reached the wall.

          It is not uncommon to see a Masters swimmer have trouble getting out of a pool. Some of the older ones duck under lane lines to get to a ladder, especially in a pool like the one at Riverside, where the blocks are at the deep end. This though was clearly different. David wasn’t moving at all as they pulled him out and the people around his lane were waving for help in that way you see when something is clearly very wrong.

          At a Masters swim meet, there are people from almost every walk of life. Two doctors who were getting ready to swim races, were with David instantly. Two nurses were there too. The EMT unit was on the scene in minutes. We all watched in near silence for the next 45 minutes as they worked desperately to try to bring him back. A couple of times they got a pulse. Then they lost it again.

           Ralph Swiger, an oral surgeon who got into Masters swimming because his two kids are swimmers, watched them work on David and said, “as awful as this is, chances are good it would have happened sooner if he hadn’t been a swimmer.”

          David Gregg was probably dead before he was pulled from the pool, even though the EMT’s briefly found a pulse during those moments he lay on the deck. When they rolled him out to an ambulance, we all knew he was gone. Nancy Miller, the meet director, felt obligated to tell everyone that all the volunteers would stay to finish the meet if the swimmers wanted them to. “I’m sure David would understand if you all swam,” she said.

          No doubt he would have. But none of us felt much like swimming at that point. Driving home, I thought about David Gregg and the people I’m fortunate enough to swim with. I’m certain they would agree on one thing: As tragic and as shocking as his death was, he died in a place where he was happy. He was among friends and he was doing something that gave him great joy.

          And, as Susan Ellis pointed out on Sunday night, he finished his race. That’s what athletes do. They compete until the very end.