Ultimate Swim Fan Revisits Memories of 1988 Olympic Pool in Seoul, South Korea

Guest editorial by Hugh Sullivan

FAIRFAX, Virginia, June 2. EN route to the Seoul Olympic Park, I worried, "Should I not be spending this day, one of my five days in South Korea, seeing another heritage site, maybe one of the reconstructed ancient Korean villages, or something to help me understand modern Korea, like the Korean Stock Exchange or the DMZ?"

Traveling alone, though sometimes frustrating and lonely, offers anonymity. My solitude and inability to speak Korean isolated me and confined me to a handful of experiences, mostly recommended by Lonely Planet, to which I could really relate, despite excellent English placards. I lingered before the National Folk Museum of Korea's placards about the development of Hangeul, the Korean language, dreaming for a moment that my study of Latin somehow qualified me to understand Asian etymology, and I snapped photographs of red eaves at Dongbokgeong Palace to compare to the roofs where I teach in China; but most of the time, I felt lost.

On my last day, though, solitude allowed me to indulge a strange inclination, inherited from my father, to visit the pool wherever I go. Typically, my dad finds the pool to work out the way he has loved to work out most since his days swimming at the Detroit Golf Club, University of Detroit High, and, in the late 60s and early 70s, at the University of Michigan. I also miss swimming workouts, raised as a summer-leaguer and Curl-Burke swimmer by Jeff King in D.C. before quitting after freshman year at Yale University.

My desire to find pools, however, has grown into a fascination with Olympic sites as I have begun to travel, including the Rome Olympic complex, then the Barcelona complex, the Beijing Olympics, which I witnessed, and now Seoul, but up to my time in Seoul, I had never taken a stroke in an Olympic pool. As I mounted the widening staircase of the subway exit, the red, white, and blue wings of Seoul's Olympic Park West Gate blew away my fear of wasted time. Today would be the day, I hoped, that I actually would swim in an Olympic Pool, fortunately, without anyone I know present to see, judge, or time.

The park attendant at the gate crushed me with a nervous smile. "Really?," I answered, "It's only open to members on weekdays?…Really?" Maybe he could pull some strings if I looked pitiful enough? "Alright…Well, can I look, at least?…Ok."

I thanked him as I walked away and planned how to beg the pool attendant. I had to remind myself to look around as I rushed to the other side of the wide, circular park. The white tortoise-shell shape of the pool loomed into view, crowned with a mane of blue that stretched down to its jumbo English sign, "OLYMPIC SWIMMING POOL."

This is it! I frantically look for the entrance. When I get in…I'll get in, right? They'll let me in when I tell them that this is a childhood dream, which is sort of true…and then they'll let me into the nearly empty competition pool—it must be empty, because this is an Olympic park and probably exclusive—and I'll swim a while in a lane all to myself, and then, spontaneously, I'll stab the wall, burst up with a Matt Biondi fist pump toward the empty stands, I'll explode off the block with a Jager start, like a puma mid-bound, arms taut toward the pool floor, head cocked back with eyes straight forward, and I'll have to ask someone to take a picture of that, which will take some miming to explain, but worth it! It's worth it! Then I'll climb out, shake off the gawkers, walk out, and check it off my list. "Swim in Olympic Pool." Check. I made it.

Metal grills block all entrances but the far side doors by the park exit, which soon suck me inside from the alleys between a hodgepodge of charter buses. Past the custodian in her all blue jumpsuit with her wicker broom and dustpan, past an Arena store. An Arena store?

"Of course there's an Arena store," I chide myself.

They probably still have international meets here. Do they monitor their sales here, all the way in South Korea? My thought is broken by the site of the pool, visible through a solitary window wedged in the line of shops. Glorious! It's practically empty. I knew it would be. Even better, the people swimming are taking long, efficient strokes, the kind of people who are probably also thinking about Biondi.

How do I get in?

Past some sort of office, a travel agency maybe. Past an almost full workout room, past a milling crowd of Korean patrons. Past three girls on a wooden bench, giggling. Are they laughing at me? Who cares? I'm traveling alone! Through a bare hallway, I find a counter with a wall of keys and two attendants behind it. "Hi…do you speak English? Oh, she does? Ok, erm.. sorry… can I swim? Yes?!" YES! He points me backward. I return, assuming he means I need a ticket, when I spot a door and pull it to find out that it opens. Maybe, just maybe, it's free…

I march out from underneath the platform and pull out my camera. On either side of the pool, about three swimmers could lay their towels lengthwise between the wall and the gutter and still leave room for a judge to walk. "Tap tap tap." A waving finger and glower radiate from the weight room window. No shoes on deck.

Now in socks, I snap a shot toward the scoreboard. The time-of-day clock is analog, but the screen displays flawless pictures without a single dull pixel. And look at the pool! It's 10 lanes, 50 meters, and, at its shallowest point, one meter deep?

Maybe this isn't the pool. Now that I think of it, I see no stands. Metal covers drape the ceiling, converging on a white beam of concrete that traces the line of the building's blue mane. That time board, though. Those metal covers must retract to open the stands for big meets. Yes, each has a handle at the bottom. This must be it. Maybe the pool was just really shallow. After all, I was two years old. Pool technology must have been different in 1988.

I turn around to get a picture toward the platform, Greg Louganis' platform, when a lifeguard approaches and signs, "No pictures," smiling and waving a finger. "Where's the locker room?" I ask. "Do you have ticket?" "I didn't see a ticket counter." "Oh, oh. Ok," she smiles, "go back that way…" "Would you mind showing me?" And she led me to the door, paused for me to put on my shoes and put away my camera, and brought me back to that travel-agency-like desk.

One entry costs 6,000 W, about six U.S. dollars. The women behind the counter laugh at me as I come and go, but I barely hear them. Back at the desk, I get a key this time, with which I jab mercilessly at a small locker in some sort of small, white auxiliary locker room behind the desk before asking for help and being led to the larger men's locker room, a wooden-floored homage to a Korean bathhouse.

Patrons must remove their shoes at the door and stow them on shelves or the tile floor before mounting the raised wooden platform floor, which is heated in the traditional Korean ondol style. Naked men lounge everywhere. I decide to take my shoes with me to my locker, walking past the eyes through the foyer and immediately shoving all my belongings into my locker to don my suit, a Christmas present, as quickly as possible.

I then return to the hallway, past the desk and through the only pool door I know, summoning all of my focus to savor the moment and take note of the facilities. The diving well, deep and wide, leads to the 10-lane 50-meter pool, blocks at both ends. Underneath the former stands, a passageway leads to a single, five-lane 50-meter pool. Both pools seem empty. Today is a special moment during my time on this side of the world, because I have my choice of lane and my own individual lane space. I hurry back and dip my toe in the water of the big pool while putting on my goggles, through which I spot the guard approaching. I knew I should have brought a cap!

She giggles, "50 minutes." "I only have 50 minutes?" It's not the cap! "Ok! Fine! I can do that. 50 minutes!" And I turn back toward the water as she looks down at her hands as if to count fingers and says, "Yes…mm… 10 minutes…do you know?" "Yes! 10 times five. Got it! Thank you." "Ok! Good," she says, turning to walk away. Then I see people getting out. It's 1:50 p.m.: break time at Olympic Park.

I take this as a sign from God to go stretch. Now the old women on the bench giggle at me. I turn my back and swing arm circles until, at 1:55, a chime sounds, giving way to loud notes, "Apple-bottom jeans and the boots with the furrrrrr."

The last time I heard this song, T-Pain's "Low," I had just entered a college party. Staring at the ceiling in disbelief, I looked down to see the women behind me in rank and file, stretching in time and all looking across the water toward a 10-foot wide blue raised platform, on which a lifeguard leads: extend right leg, down-down, down, extend left leg, down-down, down, pump arms forward elbows out to the side, step right, pump again, arms out, step left, right foot back, left foot back, right foot… is that a Cha Cha?

The women are multiplying! Exactly 30 of them, and there are men, too, not just old men but 20-somethings. I embrace my solitude, joining the line at the streamline shimmy, which exposes my left shoulder blade for an old man to tap: "You swim?" I laugh, "Yes!" "7 and 9 free," gesturing toward the far side of the pool. Who is this man threatening my prerogative? I play dumb. "Oh, so I should swim there?" "Yes." The song ends, and the body of voices surges toward the lanes.

Dozens more pour out of the hallway from the warm-up pool, mostly toward 7 and 9. I slink to lane 7 and dip my toe in as I put on my goggles. I have to swing my head to make sure this is happening. What happened to my empty pool? An expectant face looks up at me and then jostles past me to penguin dive into the water, followed by a stream of women. As I delay, the lifeguard approaches me again, "Do you have a cap?"

She pityingly fetches a straggling spandex cap lying on the block of lane three, considers it, and frowns, "Too small." I smile back, "No," and sit it over my ears as usual. Her mouth opens wide as she raises a hand to cover her laugh, and I start toward the lane before asking, "Is there any way I can swim in another lane, maybe one of these ones, fewer people? These have too many people. I want to go fast… I'll join the class. Whatever." "Mmm…7 and 9 free."

There are already 16 women in my lane when I return. Since I have gotten used to the crowds by now, I jump in and grit a smile. I should have known better than to expect lane-space in the pool. I swim about 10 yards and drift or slowly Tarzan the rest, looking over at lanes 0-6, where classes are beginning. When I lift my head on the back half of a hundred, they are standing in line in the one-meter shallow end, facing the same direction and leisurely flapping their arms in unison like herons, just barely tapping the surface of the water with each downward flap.

As I flip and swim back, the line begins a set of jumping jacks. 100 meters later, they're massaging each others shoulders down the chain, lowering their hands to massage each others' torsos and then bobbing to the cadence of the female lifeguard, who has donned a wetsuit and paces back and forth past the swimmers, joking and laughing. When she reaches the other side of the line, the students turn in unison to massage the person formerly behind them. By now, I suspect they are mocking me. Are they ever going to swim in those lanes?

A woman stops me in my lane: "What is your national?…America? I was just in Miami…Why?! Bay-cation!" Abruptly she sinks and pushes off. I wait a little while because the crowds are beginning to thin, opening up some room, and soon I Berkoff blastoff…straight into a woman's feet. To my left, the lifeguard stands at the flags, instructing each swimmer to push off and begin swimming breaststroke, then adjusting the hip position by lifting the torso of each as they pass her. All together, each lane, including the free-swim lanes, has 16-20 swimmers, 120 swimmers for this class and 60 more for simple recreation. Through the hall, the warm-up pool overflows with women aquacizing.

The chimes sound again. I ignore it for as long as possible but soon give up and linger in the shallow end with some others. Suddenly, the old man who tapped my shoulder appears from beneath a lane rope.

"You have a good time," he asks.

"Yes, you? Do you swim here often?"

"Yes. 15 years."

"Has it changed?"

"Mm…yes, 15 years straight."

"Do they ever take off those metal covers," I rephrase.

"No." Those Olympic doors are closed.

Seoul's Olympic park has sunk seamlessly into the fiber of its city. It stands apart as a monument, for sure, with more sculptures than most other art gardens in the world, and an expansive Olympic museum that boasts updated exhibits on all of Olympic history, devoting special attention, of course, to the Games of 1988 and memorabilia collected from momentous Korean moments like a ball touched by the gold-medal winning Korean Women's Handball team.

Tucked in a corner, past the signs explaining the swirl of the Seoul Olympic insignia, past the documents detailing South Korea's coup as a recently founded and still-developing nation in 1988 in attaining the Olympics and somehow avoiding the boycotts that plagued its precedent Games; beyond signs about Florence Griffith Joyner and her sister-in-law, Jackie Joyner Kersee; about the steroid scandal that ceded gold to Carl Lewis; and about the four-gold performance of Soviet gymnast Vladimir Artemov; I watched a private wall-mounted movie screen, on which Janet Evans touched the wall, and I remembered my almost superstitious devotion to Ultraswim chlorine-removing shampoo, the bottles stamped with her image. I saw Biondi pump his fist. But all of these moments are filed away.

You can read about the history all over the web. I paid my respects to the ring of flags and wondered what the ceremony must have looked like when countries reconvened at the park in 1990 to make a new monument of buried stones engraved with their country's names, buried together within the ring; but I did not find pomp, especially on that winter day, with the lake frozen over and the fountains asleep.

I found a temporary ice-rink filled with patrons, a group of unicyclists circling the flame beneath the park's gate, people walking their dogs and adjusting the dogs' winter sweaters, joggers, and, by the pool, a fleet of charter buses that may once have carried Olympic athletes but now advertise, "Swimming.korea-sports.com." What I found looked like a planted mass, a ship left behind underwater but blossomed, with care, into a living reef that welcomed me when I put on my goggles.

The old man silently beckons me with his hand, taking a large breath and then plunging himself underwater to star-fish float. He blows out all his air, and his bony frame sinks for a moment, arcs toward the bottom, then reemerges. Upon my request, he does it again together with me, this time watching me closely from his lane and resurfacing quickly.

"Air, out! Bubbles," he instructs.

We sink together once more, he gives me a thumbs-up underwater, and then again at the top. When I motion to keep swimming, he says, "Rest," climbs out, and waits for me. As we walk away, he says, "Shower," and I follow him past the warm-up pool, to which he points and says, "Only women and children," back to the locker room, a connected poolside portal I had missed earlier, before I remember to return the cap. I tell him I'll be back, leaving him as he joins his friends.

The lifeguard had disappeared. The loudspeaker warbled, "Boots with the furrrrrr…the whole party looking at herrrrr" for the dance-stretching crew, which had reunited, some faces new, but most the same as before. The jumbotron had reverted to its former display, an ad for the park's coffee chain, "Hans Coffee."

I left the cap on the lane-three block from which it came. Back in the locker room, the showers were empty. I packed up my things, put my shoes on at my locker, and walked through the foyer past the glares and tongue-clucks before I realized that I should have waited until I reached the hallway.

Past the desk, past a hair-drying area, past the buses, past the dogs and the joggers, the sculptures and flags, I boarded my train once more.

Last summer, SwimmingWorld.TV toured the South Korean Olympic facility. To see the tour, click here.

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