Jennie Mack has been competing for 40 years from the beginning of Masters (in New Zealand 1972/73) where she started a club up in her hometown of New Plymouth and competed for 12 years there before she moved to Mackay, Queensland, Australia in 1985. She has competed in seven World Masters swims. Her best stroke is breaststroke.
In 1990 my partner and I joined the Australian Masters swim team and travelled to Rio for the 3rd World Masters Swim Titles. The swimming was held at the Maracano Soccer Stadium swimming pool.
Several days before the competition started when swimmers were practicing, all the toilets blocked and effluent flowed over and slowly crept towards the pool. The American health doctor who had previously checked out the facility jumped up and down and threatened to close down the meet.
Imagine our disappointment on arriving there and not be able to compete.
Locals were called in to try and stem the sewerage with buckets and brooms – to no avail. Panic!
The Army was called in to clean up. Eventually calm reigned and the toilets stopped flowing. The problem was that the toilets could not cope with the large number of competitors and the pool turned green. The doctor warned us that we could all get typhoid.
To add to the chaos, local youths were jumping over fences and stealing swimmers bags. Swimmers had their gear stolen on the beaches also. The New Zealand team wore bright track suits that drew attention to them and had their passports stolen when their tour leader who had the passports in a bag put the bag on the ground and it was whipped away. We dressed down like the locals and wore no jewelry. When going out for a meal, we put enough cash in our socks to pay for a meal and if we were robbed we planned to return to our hotel to get more.
Funny story: one little guy from Sydney said he was too scared to go out at night. I told him to put a full can of Coke in a sock and take it with him and if he was attacked to swing it around over his head and bop any attacker. Well his group was attacked by a big fat guy and he did just that and his attacker ran way. I laughed and told him it was a joke – but the joke worked.
This article was written by Jennie Mack.
