Swimming Facts

The world’s largest swimming pool can be found at the San Alfonso del Mar resort in Chile. The pool is 1,013 m (3,324 ft) long, has a maximum depth of 35 m, and even has sailing boats.

Tim Duncan trained for the Olympics as a teenager. He was one of the best young swimmers in the country. His sister Tricia had already swum at the 1988 Olympics. Then Hurricane Hugo hit St. Croix in 1989 and destroyed the island's only Olympic-size pool. The only place left to train was the open ocean, and Duncan was terrified of sharks. He quit swimming, picked up basketball at 14, and became a five-time NBA champion.

Austin Appelbee was 13 when his family's kayak flipped off Western Australia. His mother told him to swim for shore. He swam two hours with a life jacket. When it slowed him, he took it off. He swam two more hours without one. He reached shore and sprinted another mile to find a phone. His family was found 14 km out after 10 hours. Everyone survived.

A woman drove her SUV into the water behind a Virginia Beach seafood restaurant. The doors wouldn't open. Strangers smashed the windows as it sank. One of them was Jeremy Way - a 17-year Navy rescue swimmer who happened to be eating lunch nearby. He put her in a cross-chest carry and swam her to safety. The SUV vanished moments later.

The greatest finswimmer alive watched a trolleybus carrying 92 passengers plunge into a reservoir in Yerevan. He dove in 20 times through shattered glass in near-zero visibility, pulling people from the wreck one by one. 20 survived. His lungs were permanently destroyed. He never competed again. The Soviet government suppressed the story for 6 years. He named his shoe company Second Breath.