8 Ways to Pass Time Before Paris Olympics Swimming Starts

Courtesy: Charles Hartley

Less than one month from now the supersonic swimming events splash down at the Paris Olympics. That leaves you less than 30 days to figure out what to do to pass the time and get juiced up for these events.

It’s going to be hard to wait with the tension and excitement being so palpable. But don’t worry. I’m here to help you do time-consuming things that will get you ready to sit down and watch the greatest show on Earth.

Time Passer 1: Learn about butterflies and butterfliers

We have to start with the whole topic of butterflies, you know, the little buggy birdy type moth things with cool-colored wings often yellowish, or maybe those are yellow-jacket bees. Watching butterflies dance across the air is, in some ways I can’t quite articulate, as beautiful as watching U.S. Olympic swimmers do the butterfly stroke.

Your time-passing project is to wonder about – and do research if you’re interested – on which of the U.S. Olympic swimmers who qualified in the butterfly events read the most books in grade or high school, or maybe even college, about butterflies. Or using another metric, which ones think about butterflies the most while doing the butterfly. This will be a pretty time-consuming project, which is what we want. The goal here is to make it feel as if time is blasting like light through a fiber optic strand.

On the human front, there is a flock of butterfliers, or a school of butterfliers if you prefer that terminology, you’ll need to find out about. Among the women: Torri Huske, 100 fly, Alex Shackell, 200 fly, Gretchen Walsh, 100 fly; and the men: Caeleb Dressel, 100 fly; Thomas Heilman, 100 and 200 fly.

If the whole researching about butterflies doesn’t grab you, maybe you’ll be more taken in watching each of these butterfliers do the stroke and make an assertion as to which one’s stroke is most similar to Michael Phelps doing the fly. Your call. But be objective in your analysis. Keep your emotions out of it.

Time-Passer 2: Find out if “Touchdown Jesus” cheered on Guiliano

You may have to go to South Bend, Indiana for this but what else do you have to do between now and July 27, the day the swimming starts in Paris? See if you can find out if “Touchdown  Jesus” on the Notre Dame campus actually put up his arms in a touchdown motion when Notre Dame student Chris Guiliano won the 100 freestyle in the trials. And find out if Chris will be honored at halftime of a Notre Dame football game this Fall for making the team – the first to do this from the school while a student. Go to the football office; they’ll probably know about football half-time shows.

Also, when he walks out on the pool deck for his events will the Notre Dame fight song be playing and, if so, will all U.S. swimmers get their college fight songs played as they step up to the blocks? What about swimmers from other countries? Will this get out of hand?

Time-Passer 3: Unearth what makes Bobby Finke tick

Do everything in your power to figure out what makes Bobby Finke tick, how he swims super-long races and how much pain he feels and when that agony really starts to kick in and test his mental strength and muscle lactid acid.

Go find him and have a sit-down and ask if he plans to hang back for almost the entire 800 and 1500 freestyle races and then come back on the last lap to win Golds in both like he did at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Get him to tell you if his plan is to be dramatic again, make us worry almost the whole race that he may not win and then pull it out in with flair at the end.

Time-Passer 4: Float estimates for how long it would take Katie Ledecky to run the Olympic Marathon

Do some back of the envelope calculations trying to figure out how long it would take Katie Ledecky to run the 26.2-mile Paris Olympic marathon. It won’t be easy to translate because swimming is not running but the cardio capabilities she has should make her quite quicker than commoners at running 26 miles. Take a guess if you’re not sure. It’s probably around 3 hours and 10 minutes.

See if you can find out if Katie is thinking of running the marathon just to see how she does and to satisfy the world’s curiosity about how well a great swimmer’s endurance translates to a running race.

Time-Passer 5: Pinpoint when Grimes will start hurting in 6.2-mile marathon swim

Wonder to yourself, and with others if they’ll partake, at what point in the 6.2 mile swimming marathon race Katie Grimes will start to feel the pain. Will it be a half mile in, or after three miles, or will she pace herself well so she’ll feel pretty comfortable the whole time? And while in the Seine River swimming, will she be thinking about other things besides swimming to distract herself from the two-hour plus long distance odyssey?

Will she have some music playing in her ears and, if so, what sort of playlist will it be? Jazz? Soft rock? Oldies? When she finishes, wonder whether she’ll be hungry and, if so, will she be up for a ham sandwich or a burger or pizza and if pizza thin or thick crust?

Time-Passer 6: Check Hartley’s swimming credentials

Go to the LinkedIn page of Charles Hartley to see the list of credentials for writing about swimming.

Time-Passer 7: Do backflips then butterfly to the ladder

Go to your local pool, or ask you friend if you can be a guest at his or her pool, and go off the diving board starting with a backflip and then a gainer. Do butterfly all the way to the ladder after each air art demonstration.

Think about butterflies while doing this and see if that makes you do butterfly with better form and wonder what color most butterfliers are because it seems to be hard to picture relying on memory alone.

Time-Passer 8: Watch Lezak

Watch the Jason Lezak finish to the US Men’s 4 x 100 relay in 2008. Watch the whole race, actually.

Then start fantasizing about a race at the Paris Olympics ending up exactly like that one did with the U.S. winning by a fingernail at the end over the French in their host country.

See the four Americans raise their arms. Wait around to watch the medal ceremony. Notice the tears in the eyes of all four American swimmers.

Americans in Paris, all of them.

About Charles Hartley

Charles Hartley is a freelance writer based in Davidson, NC. He has a masters degree in journalism and a masters degree in business administration.