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He  competed at the  FINA World Masters competition where he dominated the sport from 1983-2002 in breaststroke, butterfly and individual medley in the 80 and over age bracket.

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It all began with my grandfather, Anton Cerer, who at the age of 8 decided to go swimming in a river in Kamnik, Slovenia. My father tells us that grandfather left his house on a  hot summer day to go to the river to cool off.  Anton jumped in and soon was swept off by a current which pulled him into the intake channel for the steel mill . Anton did not know how to swim but luckily for him a farmer heard him screaming and was able to pull him to safety.The farmer then yelled at both Anton and his parents telling them to teach him how to swim. So the lessons began.

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I guess you can say we learned how to swim before we learned how to walk. When we were 3 months old he would submerge  us into the pool and we’d emerged like tadpoles from the water. By the age of 2 ½  I was competing on a summer swim team  and enjoyed swimming with my grandpa as he continued to swim for the Masters Club.

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He became my hero and the reason I loved swimming. As I grew older and learned of these experiences and tragedies it impacted me so much that I began to teach swimming lessons to children to learn the importance of swimming.

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Soon, Anton grew to love this fascinating sport in which he excelled and started to swim competitively. The real irony in this story is he eventually  became the first Slovenian swimmer to win a European Championship medal. He would place 3rd in 1948 in London  and  2nd in 1947 in Monte Carlo for the 200m breaststroke.   He also represented the Yugoslavian Olympic Team in the 1936 Berlin and 1948 London Summer Olympics games. His best finish would be at the London games placing 5th in the 200 meter breaststroke event.

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As with any athlete his days of competition ended, he married  and had 5 children .  But as fate would have it one winter day his two year old daughter Mojca would walk out of the yard  to the stream unnoticed and fall through the ice and drown. My father who was not even born when she died was taught early to swim as were his other siblings. Today, he frequently tells us the emphasis to learn how to swim at a very young age was due to his sister’s death not the goal of creating the next generation of olympians.