Speedo Grand Challenge

Photo: Kaitlin Sandeno and Natalie Coughlin

I am going to blame the whole thing on Mr. Lezak, Jason's dad. When we went to the Dave Denniston Relay he told me about the Speedo Grand Challenge. I had no idea I could see elite and Olympic caliber swimming a few miles from home. As you can see from the pics I got Olympics Rings Tattoo crazy. I wanted to see everyone's Rings! Some I could see casually and some I had to ask to see. It was an interesting meet. British Swimming used the meet as a last chance to qualify for World Championships in Montreal. They came to the meet shaved and tapered and ready to make the team. A lot of pool and meet records fell those three days and most if not all of them to GRB caps. I was definitely not expecting to see them there and swimming so fast. Again Novaquatics was host to a wonderful meet. The environment is such that I found myself helping clean up after the meet. It just seemed to be the right thing to do. As if it was my home. The way this meet is different from others I have been to is the prize money is chosen by a spin of the wheel. The person who qualified first for the final gets to spin to see what they were swimming for in the way of prize money. They only allow the top four qualifiers to the final so the heats went pretty fast too. No taking it easy to qualilfy. Decent races the whole day. I sat in the USC section since the only person at the whole pool I even remotely knew going in was Kaitlin Sandeno. It was very exciting for me to see Natalie Coughlin swim too, she and Kaitlin are such amazing women. I got to meet up with Mr. Lezak again and met Mrs. Lezak too. Jason had a back injury and only raced the first day but his parents returned to the pool to support the meet. That's what I call class. This is an annual event and a good time. Bravo Novaquatics for being a great host! Oh and talk about sunburns.... That British team was not prepared for the bright California Sun. So thanks Mr. Lezak and Kaitlin for pointing me to quite a few meets in my local area. My spring started here. These pictures are the reason for this website.