I can’t speak for all Olympic sports, but it seems to me that more international swimmers come to America to train than athletes in any other event.
Florida especially seems to be a hotspot, but it’s easy to figure out why: The weather is generally great for training year-round. And, everywhere I’ve gone since I moved here, local swimmers have been doing big things.
I used to live in Winter Haven, home of American gold medalist Kenneth Brokenburr. When I lived in Lakeland and interned at the Lakeland Ledger in the summer of 2012, one of my biggest stories (and my first-ever front cover feature) was about Olympic swimmer Allan Gutierrez — who had come from Honduras to America to study at and swim for Florida Southern College.
When I attended Florida Gulf Coast University, the swim team was loaded with talent from all over the globe — some swimmers hailed from Sweden, Barbados, Puerto Rico, Scotland and more. And, they were good — especially the “Swedish Fish,” Emma Svensson, who in March, became the first Eagle to ever place in the finals at the NCAA Division I Championships.
This week, I spent part of my Monday morning talking to the head of a program that has produced Olympic swimmers for the last 46 years. I figured that, if anyone could tell me how so many international athletes latch on to programs like Blue Wave and FGCU, it would be Ron Turner.
“We don’t go looking for them,” Turner told me. “With the history of our program and our location in Florida, they come looking for us. Some of our international swimmers already have previous relationships with former coaches here, current coaches here, friends that they’ve met, other swimmers at international meets and such. They find us before we find them.
“I think what happens is, sometimes, they come over and maybe get experience to go to Miami for a meet, or Orlando for a meet. They see teams from the area and they just start inquiring. They come and find us, ask if they can train and, obviously, we accommodate those swimmers.”
What drives them to come to America, though? Why do some of them choose to move here, rather than stay in their home countries? I looked back at my profile of Gutierrez, because I thought I remembered writing about this. Sure enough, we had talked about it in our email conversation.
Gutierrez is as smart as all get out — he graduated fifth in his class in 2010 with a 3.7 GPA and earned an opportunity to swim and study at FSC. But, that left him with a tough choice to make: he could either move to America to study and swim, alone, or stay with his family in Honduras.
He told me moving was the hardest decision of his life but that he also knew it was the only way he’d keep swimming.
Two years later, he swam for his country in the London Olympics.
He didn’t medal, but the opportunity to compete on that stage was good enough for him. Had he not come to Florida, he may never have been able to say that he is a former Olympian.
Maybe the next Allan Gutierrez is right here in Plant City, thinking about latching on with a competitive team and shooting for the moon. Who knows?