Come on, let's sweat...

Scenes from the FINA Diving Grand Prix--Fort Lauderdale...

Yesterday, I spent the early afternoon, on what turned out to be a very humid FtL day, sweating-up-a-storm while volunteering as a drug-control chaperone at the diving event at the pool.

Yesterday's portion of the Grand Prix consisted of the finals for 3 events:

• woman's platform (which my friend Laura--not the one moving to Boca--unfortunately didn't make the final)
• men's 3m springboard, and
• women's synchronized platform (Laura was in that).

(The picture above is of someone with Gatorade walking in front of one of the Chinese divers practicing a handstand on-deck before headed up the tower, during the women's platform final.)

My job as a chaperone was to notify and then escort a selected athlete to the doping-control area for testing. The people to be tested where pre-determined by placing (it was posted prior to the event that 1^st and 2^nd in each event plus one other randomly selected place would be tested--there were 6 divers in the first two finals, and I believe 7 pairs in the synchro final). Once notified, the chaperone shadows the athlete until they report to doping control. As an athlete has 60 minutes to report following notification (assuming they don't have another event that day), one can end up shadowing someone for awhile. Mine reported at 50 minutes; the 3 from the women's platform event all dove in the synchro final and when to testing after that (which meant their chaperones where following them for over 3 hours).

So, for the 4 hours of the event (I went through a brief training prior to it starting) consisted of sweating waiting through the women's platform final (they assigned male chaperones to males, women to women), then spent the men's 3m final (the warm up of which is pictured at left) purposely watching the participants and monitoring the event progress. My concern with watching the men's final was so I could discern who the 6 divers were, and find traits that work hold once they got dry/dressed (there was an Italian, a Brazilian, 2 Americans, and 2 Chinese--that was their dive order as well). I spent most of the final trying to spot ways of distinguishing between the 2 Chinese divers, as they were the 2 I was having the most difficulty telling apart (not that they looked very similar, mind you, just that they were more similar--to me--than the other 4).

Shortly before the men's event started, I was assigned the winner to notify and follow. Upon completion of the event, I notified him (who happened to dive at Texas just after I swam there) and then got to follow him around as he got dressed, got his award, was interviewed, talked to his coach, watch a round of the women's synchro final (which has started while he was being interview), and finally take him to drug control. Then I was done.

I returned to the pool deck, and caught the end of the women's synchro final. The wind had picked up some, which helped cool things a bit, but probably wasn't ideal up atop the 10m-tall platform (not how full the flag is at the back end of the tower in the pic at left).

All-in-all, not too terrible. I even managed to get home with enough time to cool down before the ISHOF Induction dinner, which was a nice affair--but those events aren't really my thing (the food was good though, and I only sweated a little while putting on my coat and tie).

Anyways, I need to jet again: time for the LMSC awards luncheon. So, Happy Mother's Day... hasta

Everybody dance now
Come on let's sweat, sweat...
Let the music take control
Let the rhythm move you, sweat
Sweat...