Speedo Needs to Head Back to the Aqua lab

A very true story about a swimmer, and his LZR, from contributor Jesse Kubanet.

I’ll never forget my first mid-season taper meet in November of my freshman year of college.  Not because of the times I went, or the races I swam, but for one rather monumental incident that has changed my life forever.  This is my very, VERY, true story about waiting to swim in the finals of the 100 freestyle.  As you read this story, keep in mind that this all happened within a matter of 2-3 minutes.

I was pumped, to say the least.  Here I am at my first big college invitational, and I find myself waiting to swim the A final of the 100 free, and event that I am truthfully not very good at.  In prelims I had one of those out of body experience races.  The one’s where you touch the wall and say to your self, “How did THAT happen?”  However, the focus of this story is not on the swim itself, in fact, I have no idea how that race went.  It was what happened right before that burns into my memory forever…

Before we get to what happened, I have to preface the “incident” with a summary of how my body had been acting up until that very event.  It was Saturday night, so it was essentially my last event of the meet.  The meet itself began on Thursday morning, and was followed by several prelims and finals sessions.  For some reason, I do not know if it was nerves or the diet of “meet food” consisting of power bars and Gatorades, but I could NOT stop going to the bathroom.  Let’s just say I ran out of fingers while trying to keep track of the defecation situation.  Not to mention, I was urinating like Sea Biscuit constantly.  The running joke on the team was, “Oh I have to go to the bathroom, Jesse, need to come with me?”  And unfortunately, I always did.

Now, fast forward to the 100 free finals.  The C final dives in and the B final makes their way behind the blocks, while I wait with the others in the A final.  It is at this moment, I realize, I have never had to pee so badly in my entire life.  It arrived without me being aware, and with the stealth speed of Navy Seal Team 6.  I looked helplessly to my left, over to the men’s locker room that was across the pool.  This is the 100 free at a college swim meet.  I have maybe two minutes if I want to try it, but I don’t dare.  I glance to my right at the warm down pool, which had been incredibly cold the entire meet.  As much as I have to pee, I don’t want to jump in the arctic waters right before a race that I felt I could do well in.  Finally, I looked down.

Through my goggles I was simply looking at my crotch as a Speedo LZR Elite racing suit covered it.  “Surely,” I thought to myself, “That these suits are so tight, and made with incredible fabrics by scientists, that if I just started peeing right now, it would just kind of…diffuse itself amongst the suit, making me look damp from the water.”  So I stood there, with my stone cold logic and hands on my hips, and I started to go.  What happened next, was something that I never could have foreseen.

About midway through my public urination in the middle of a throng of maybe 30 people, I decided to take a look down and see if my hypothesis was correct.  That, in fact, it was just diffusing around the suit.  That was not at all what was happening.  Instead, I looked down only to find that a stream of urine was flying out of my suit with an arch so perfect, it was like there was nothing covering it at all.

I obviously stopped as fast as I could.  “Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap,” I thought to myself.  “How many people saw that?!  At least fifteen!  I bet my mom saw it from the stands.  What do I do if someone asks me about it?”  In the middle of my panic the whistle blew and we were ushered behind the blocks for the race to start.  I was still half full so I wasn’t exactly excited to dive in, but I swam those four laps as fast as I could for the soul purpose of finishing my urination at the wall before the line judge screamed at me to, “EXIT THE POOL!  NOW, SIR!”

In the locker room after the conclusion of the meet, I shared my tale with my teammates who howled with laughter like the hyenas from the Lion King, but one of my friends, in particular, was laughing very hard.  Then it dawned on me, he was in the same heat as I was for the 100, and I was about to ask when he blurted out, “Me and like 4 other dudes from other schools saw it!”  Just then, a guy who I had never met before walked by and said, “Ha!  This is the kid who peed on deck!”  I didn’t know if I should’ve been embarrassed, or weirdly proud?  At the time, embarrassment was running the show.

I’ve told this story to numerous people, both swimmers and non-swimmers alike.  I always get the same reaction of laughter, and mild disgust.  The reason I share this tale with so many is because I hope someone from Speedo gets a hold of it, and realizes that as fast as their technical swimwear is, it is still SEVERE.

Contributor, Jesse Kubanet, started swimming when he was young, because he was heavy and needed to loose weight.  Years later, he joined his high school swim team and fell in love with wearing Speedos.  He is currently a Junior on the swim team at Wheeling Jesuit University.  He will be away from the team this fall, to spend a semester in Chicago participating in the Second City’s semester long Comedy Studies Program.  He loves swimming and would love to party with Anders Holm from Workaholics.  After college, his dream is to become a comedy writer, especially for Conan O’brien.