Good Enough for Bronze

Sit right back kids and you'll hear a tale, a tale that follows nicely on my crushing rebuke of the International Swimming Federation (or whatever they call their cabal).

You see, back in the day, Little Jackie Showers was once in a competitive swim club. Okay, perhaps not that competitive, but we did race. I was in my elementary swim club in grade three and I competed in races. Being the strategic type, even at that young age, I had a strategy for success. I sussed up this whole swimming thing early on and concluded that there was no way I could be the fastest guy in the pool. Fastest at swimming fast that is, but swimming as I've already explained has a loophole where getting there fastest isn't the only criteria.

What I figured out was that if I worked hard on one of the "other" strokes then maybe I could get decent at it even if everyone could kick my butt in freestyle. In fact if I just put my energy into practicing one stroke and tanked it when racing in other events in the three other strokes then I just might have a chance. So I became a backstroke specialist. I couldn't swim worth crap, but I could do a pretty good backstroke.

Yes, sports fans, you know the 3rd best backstroker in the grade 3 class at Willows school in 1972. Amongst the boys that is. A field of at least a dozen and I was better than most of them.

Exactly!