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By: Victor Mielnik

This is my swimming story.

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Michael Phelps is one of the most famous Olympic swimmers in the world. He has won 28 medals in 5 Olympic games. 23 of those medals were gold, 3 silver and 2 bronze. He went to his last Olympics in 2016 and won 4 gold and 2 silver medals. Michael is 39 years old now and he is probably not going to compete in another Olympics. Michael Phelps was my inspiration to start swimming. He is the reason why I want to try harder when I train. To me, he is the best swimmer in the world and I would love to be just like him.

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There are four swimming strokes: butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and free style. They are all unique and require different body movements. The most difficult style is butterfly because you need to move your chest and hands completely out of the water to get a strong legs kick. Free style is considered the fastest. My strongest style is breaststroke. I won the most medals swimming different breaststroke distances: 50 meters, 100 meters and 200 meters. My least favorite style is back stroke.

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I started swimming about 5 years ago. First, I took swimming lessens. There are six levels. The first one is for beginners who cannot swim. In level 3, you start learning all four strokes. By level 6, you should be able to swim 100 meters free style, breast stroke, butterfly and back stroke, dive to the water and do a flip and side turns. When all levels are completed, you can try out for a pre-swim team and then move on to a swim team. There are three swim team levels: bronze, silver and gold. I am currently on the bronze team.

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Before the COVID-19 pandemic, I had 1 hour practice in the pool every day.  We would start with a warm-up which is 200 meters free style and 100 meters IM (IM stands for individual medley) where we swim one lap of every stroke. Then, we start working on an individual stroke, for example, if it was a breaststroke day, we would start off swimming five times 100 meters this style. Next, we would do some drills which are muscle exercises in the water. During each training we can swim a distance of 1 kilometer to 1 mile.

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During the pandemic, our trainings continue without the water. Every day in the evenings, I meet my coach and my swim team via Zoom and we do some land exercises to strengthen our bodies. We want to be ready for when we get back to the pool and start swimming again. I hope that, during the summer, I will be able to attend my swimming camp.

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When you decide to participate in a swimming competition, you have to chose your races including the strokes and distances. Since there are many races going on, everyone has to have their hand marked with numbers which include the event, heat and lane. The event usually represents the style and the heat the distance. Better swimmers normally get the middle lane which are 3 and 4.

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This is 200 meter breaststroke race.
I an on lane 4 and won the first place thanks to my friends and fans.

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During the competition, when you are on the last lap and close to the pool wall, you need to hit the pressure plate as fast as you can. It will stop your timer and show your time on a big score board. The display will have your lane number, your place and your time. Below is the screen from one of the competitions I participated in. My lane number was 4.

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If you win a race, you get a medal. Here are a few medals I won during my competitions.

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I have been to many swimming competitions. Here is a video of me competing in a 200 IM and winning the 1st place.

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Thanks to my hard work and good swimming times, I qualified for the Junior Olympics this year. They were scheduled for May but did not take place due to the pandemic. I hope I can do it next year.