Caeleb Dressel left Junior Nationals this morning in an ambulance after having trouble breathing in the wake of his 100 fly race.
One day after his ground-breaking sub-19-second 50 free race, Dressel reported some difficulty breathing in the pool area and left the meet to get medical attention.
Dressel swam the 200 medley relay and the 100 fly this morning before leaving, and wound up scratching the 100 breast. It doesn’t sound like the medical situation is too serious for the 17-year-old Bolles School star, but at this point Bolles coaches say that it’s uncertain if he’ll swim finals tonight.
The Greensboro Aquatic Center just had its HVAC systems upgraded last week to help improve air quality leading into the Junior National meet, but the results appear to be pretty mixed, based on swimmers’ reviews and now Dressel’s situation.
what causes the bad air? the increased level of chloramines.
what causes the increase in chloramines? large number of swimmers uses up the chlorine in the water and the agitation of the water by the swimmers releases the chloramines into the atmosphere.
why aren’t the chloramines filtered? current air handling systems – hvac – only recirculate the bad air. the air is barely filtered.
solutions? 1) better air handling systems which REMOVE the air from the building. i have experienced the in-gutter evacuator system and it works perfectly; retrofitted systems not as well. 2) smaller meets. usa-s knew the meet could top 1500-2000 swimmers. gac knew they had a history of air problems with large meets (i.e. the y-nat… Read more »
I thought Knoxville (last year) way WAYYYYY worse as far as air quality…. it’s not great here either, but way better than Knoxville.
No news on how the kid is doing?
A: Not too difficult to design a proper a new HVAC system in a new facility. B: It’s a much harder task to retrofit an originally poorly designed system in an existing facility. Since they originally failed on A, I suspect they are having even more trouble with B and their new HVAC doesn’t have the efficiency they would have liked. Maybe they didn’t have time to test the new system properly before this meet but at the very least they should have drained all the pools and refilled about a week prior.
Air quality should be a prominent agenda item at USA
Swimming. It effects athlete performance and safety. I coaches at a
club for many years. This club’s president and de facto Head Coach
also owns and operates a pool service company. The coaches athletes
and parents were all effected by the unsafe air quality. In a three
year span six different athletes were medically diagnosed with
‘Vocal Chord Disorder’ -inflammation of the lining of the vocal
chords. As the only real game in town, athletes had to ‘deal with
it’ or quit the sport. Sorry for the impassioned expose. I pray Mr
Dressell is well. I certainly also hope USAs takes… Read more »
“Air quality should be a prominent agenda item at USA
Swimming.”
– It’s not. Every year the Region VIII Sectional meet is held at the Mizzou aquatic center in the summer. Each year, the air quality ranges anywhere from poor to suffocating. in 2009 it was so bad people were coughing up blood. After numerous inquiries to USA swimming about it, they basically said that pools that place a bid that win are awarded the meet. If the GAC gave USA swimming the best bid/deal then they got the bid, regardless of any possibility of air issues.
I was at USMS Nationals and did not think the air was bad at the GAC. I have also swam at Jenks… Read more »
City water with monochloramine sanitizer is common. When that water is added as make-up water to pools, it adds to the chloramine problems. There are two solutions to that, which would prevent build-up of pool chloramines:
1) make-up water for the pool is filtered through a charcoal filter before it enters circulation.
2) make-up water for the pool enters circulation, but hits a UV light before it gets into the pool. UV breaks up chloramine, which is the reason outdoor pools rarely have chloramine problems (besides the fact that they have better air circulation anyway).
Make-up water should never be added directly to a pool, as with a hose or straight pipe.
I am a swimmer who usually doesn’t have any problems with
indoor pools whatsoever. Indy was great because there wasn’t 1200+
swimmers there. Texas Juniors was also great because of their
amazing ventilation system even with a huge attendance of swimmers.
This is by far the worst indoor meet I’ve ever been to. Coaches and
parents from many teams that I have spoken to can feel the effects.
When the fastest kid in the country is having issues and is carted
away by an ambulance, I think something is wrong. I genuinely feel
bad for Bolles swimming and any team that has had to scratch their
events because of this poor… Read more »
Hope he is fine and able to compete in his remaining races.
Air quality doesn’t seem substandard to me.
I’m coughing up my insides and dying slowly but surely, air
quality is terrible