
Young swimmers will get the opportunity to hop in the pool with a trio of Olympic gold medalists when the Swim Champions Fitter and Faster Tour comes to La Jolla. The inaugural nationwide tour will make a stop at the Coggan Family Aquatic Complex on Saturday, Aug. 29. “When you look at young baseball players, basketball players and football players, they have a lot of opportunities to see the best players in the game by seeing professional athletes in a lot of venues. For swimming, that’s just not really that possible,” said Worth Archambault, the tour’s local project manager. “There’s such a small percentage of Olympians out there.” Olympians Ben Wildman-Tobriner, Ous Mellouli and Misty Hyman are scheduled to appear at the event. Wildman-Tobriner won gold in Beijing as part of the United States 4×100 relay team, Mellouli became the first African gold medalist in swimming in Beijing when he won the 1500m freestyle race swimming for Tunisia, and Hyman won gold in the 200m butterfly in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. “For better or worse, in swimming now everything is focused around Michael Phelps,” Archambault said. “All of the athletes coming to this clinic have either won gold medals in the Olympics or been on gold-medal relay teams. Swimming is not just about Michael Phelps — there’s a lot of other world-class athletes out there.” Across the country, the camp has had a local aspect, with more than 20 Olympians participating at 26 stops nationwide. Each of the three Olympic swimmers coming to La Jolla has a collegiate tie to California: Wildman-Tobriner and Hyman swam at Stanford, and Mellouli swims at Southern California. “These Olympic swimmers, for the most part, have come out of nationally ranked college programs, so it’ll be a great time for some of our teenage swimmers in the county to get a real feel for what it would be like to swim competitively at the collegiate level,” Archambault said. Two three-hour sessions will be held at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Each session will be divided into groups by stroke and includes races with the athletes, a question-and-answer session, autograph and photo opportunities and a gift bag for participants. There will also be programming for parents, and coaches can attend and watch for free. “It’s really designed to be much more of a motivational clinic rather than a technique clinic,” Archambault said. “The idea here is not that swimmers will come to this clinic and learn different parts of strokes that their coaches have taught. We’re not trying to interfere or compete with what the kids are learning from their home coaches.” Both Olympic and World Championship gold medals will be on display at the event. Archambault said the swim complex will also have a different feel. “The complex itself won’t look like a normal swim venue,” he said. “We have large, full-color size banners of all of the athletes. It’ll be an exciting environment to walk into to begin with.” Archambault said he expects to have between 100 and 150 swimmers at each session. Currently 75 swimmers are signed up, with 12 local club teams sending swimmers. “I’m working with USA Swimming to inform all of our local club teams and high school teams about the tour in La Jolla,” Archambault said. “The interest level is definitely there. I think as the event is getting closer, we’ll start to see a spike in the registrants.” Registration costs $75 and can be completed at www.swimchamp ions.com/signup/san-diego-ca. For more information on the event and the Olympians scheduled to attend, visit www.swimchampions.com.