Let me start off with a disclaimer for this post. When I tell a story, I tell ALL details in depth, so this post may be a little long, but it will be worth it. This weekend as you all know was the Charlotte UltraSwim. The beginning of the trip started off kind of rough with 3 flight delays and a 14 hour drive that felt like it would never end. The UltraSwim officially started Thursday evening with two of the longer distance events. We weren’t as excited about those to events as we were about the upcoming events, so we didn’t rush to get there in time for that. So we show up bright and early Friday morning to get our tickets and find out where we would be sitting. We had decided that we wanted to go all out (as the phrase for the UltraSwim this year was All-in-all out), so we had decided to get Gold Medal Seating. Let me just say, it was worth every penny of the $250 spent EVERY single penny. We get our tickets and as they were being handed to us I noticed that we were in the front row, as tired as I was that morning from the long drive and flight, seeing that we were in the front row woke me right up. We walk in our own private Gold Medal Seating entrance, which took you right past the locker rooms and the warm down pool! We felt like we had hit the JACKPOT. Little did we know it was just the beginning.
We go find our seats and we are right in front of lane 6! We were the first ones to arrive in Gold Medal Seating and we were being treated like royalty. It felt like every five minutes someone was coming over and asking if we wanted anything. The chairman of the Gold Medal Seating (Chip) and I had e-mailed back and forth a few times about ticket information and things like that, so when we arrived he walked right over and said “Now one of you is Nikki,” and he introduced himself to us. Chip asked us who we were there to watch and we said everybody. We are just huge swim fans and were there to watch everyone. He then proceeded to tell us that we were going ot be surrounded by Olympic family members. He told us that Phelps had 2 tickets beside us and Cullen Jones had 4 behind us. Ryan Lochte also had 4 directly behind us. I thought to myself “this must be fate at every meet that I have gone to I have been close to Debbie Phelps,” I knew greatness might happen, but I didn’t know how much until much later.
Our first Olympian spotting was Sir Ryan Lochte. He was warming up with the Florida team in lane 5 and he was looking pretty fabulous in that white speedo! It wasn’t too long until we saw the man himself, Michael Fred! We watched him in all his beauty walk down across the pool deck and into the warm down pool. Let me just say that either the men have gotten more muscular or the speedos have gotten smaller. Either way we gave the speedos of the weekend our stamp of approval! ;) They were small and they were tight, just the way I like em! (sorry had to go a little Sucia there. I will try to keep it PG the rest of the blog ;))
Prelims start. We are watching the races, scoping out the pool deck for any Olympians in speedos, and snapping away pics, when all of a sudden we see someone come up the steps to the Gold Medal Seating area. Yes, it was Michael Fred himself along with Garrett Weber Gale, followed by Mr. Ryan Lochte. Sitting there with them so close and trying not to take pics of them was so hard (I didn’t want to seem like a stalker). I did however manage to sneak a pic from my phone when Mike turned around. (my phone was a little less obvious than my camera with 12x zoom). Phlocte and GWG were soon joined by Mr. Cullen Jones. We were in heaven. GWG had left Gold Medal Seating, but Ryan, Michael, and Cullen were still there. Michael and Ryan were waiting to swim prelims of the 100 fly, while Cullen was secretly hoping that someone would push him out of the top 8 so he wouldn't have to swim the 100fly that night, as he doesn't usually swim butterfly. Ryan and Michael wanted Cullen in that final and there was so much trash talking. It was so cool to hear them trash talking like that.
Towards the end of prelims we decided to go over to the bleachers and meet Robin, a fellow swim fan that we had connected with on twitter. She was sitting in the stands with her two children! We were excited to meet her and her two kids. So, we went over there and started talking to Robin and met her children. All of a sudden Michael walks out of the warm down pool. Robin's kids see him coming so they start down the bleachers... we followed. I didn't think that a picture with Michael Fred would be possible. I mean, after Indy I just felt like when he is at meets all he is focused on is his swimming and didn't care about the fans as much. I was wrong. We of course let the kids go first, because I mean who is gonna push their way in front of little kids. (ok so I have to admit I did plow through a bunch of children to get a picture with Cullen Jones in Indy! I had to I was not leaving there without it! :)) Robin's son had a Texas Longhorns shirt on that day, and he was having all the swimmers sign it for him. Michael comes up to sign his book, looks at his shirt and says "We gotta get you a better shirt for tomorrow." It was so cute! After that we worked our way in there and got the picture for the WIN! As we were standing there we also got pics with Mat Grevers and Natalie Coughlin! I was so excited to meet Natalie, as she is one of my faves and I was sad she was not in Indy! Nothing really too excited happened during finals, other than we had all the swimmers two feet in front of our face and were all over the live feed!
Well, I think I have made the day one post long enough. Will post day 2 soon, enjoy!!
