JONES MAKES BIG SPLASH WITH KIDS EAGER TO SWIM
Beijing Olympic Games gold medalist Cullen Jones understands the importance of swimming. Although he was the second African-American in history to win a gold medal in swimming (he was part of the gold medal–winning U.S. 400-meter freestyle relay), water didn’t always agree with him. He almost drowned when he was five years old.
His parents took him to a water park, according to nbc.com. Before he went down a slide on an inner tube, his dad made him promise not to let go of the tube. When he got to the bottom, the tube flipped over and left him trapped underwater but clinging to the tube. Jones lost consciousness before his father spotted him and pulled him out of the water.
The 24-year-old now holds clinics to teach children how to swim, which combines the two things he loves: swimming and teaching. Jones talks about his near-drowning experience as a teaching tool, emphasizing that it can happen to anyone.
“I was told, ‘You could change the face of swimming by getting more African-Americans into swimming,’” Jones said in an interview with the Today Show. “At first I was like, ‘Really, me?’ I never got into it thinking I could do something like that; you never do. I just liked to swim.”
The four swimmers on the 400-meter freestyle relay team—Jones, Michael Phelps, Garrett Weber-Gale and anchor Jason Lezak—together set a new world record of 3:08.24. And only hours after the win, Bank of America announced that it will sponsor a Cullen Jones Tour, which will consist of a series of clinics and swim meets to encourage more children from minority backgrounds to get in the pool, according to the Today Show at msnbc.com.
“I was amazed,” Jones said in the Today Show interview. “The fact that they’re willing to put forth money to help me with something that I see as being a need in my life and wanting to try to help just opens up another chapter of us working together to get more kids into swimming.”
And because the City of Chicago has also made teaching children how to swim a priority, World Sport chicago has teamed up with the Chicago Park District through USA Swimming's "Make a Splash" program in an outreach campaign to the city's minoirty children and parents to stress the importance of water safety and knowing how to swim.
The “Make a Splash” program spreads awareness about the importance of learning how to swim. According to the CDC’s latest study on water-related injuries, an average of nine people drown each day in the United States. A disproportionate number—more than 40 percent—of those deaths are in minority communities.
“Swimming has not been a sport trumpeted in the African-American community,” said Gyata Kimmons, Chicago 2016 director of Community Relations. “Cullen Jones wants to provide additional exposure to the kids. They will see him and think, ‘If he can do it, maybe I can do it.’”
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