Eric Eel's 13-Meter Pool

A story about Eric from Equatorial Guinea, who qualified for the 2000 Sydney Olympics swimming competition despite barely knowing how to swim.

"There's this guy Eric from Equatorial Guinea who got into the 2000 Olympics through a wild card draw. He had 8 months to prepare for the Olympic games - this was a guy who had never left his home country and never swam before.

He got access to a hotel pool that he could swim in for one hour a day, 5am to 6am. The pool was only 13 meters long, and he was training for the 100-meter freestyle. He'd have to swim 10 times his training distance in the real Olympics.

Pretty quickly Eric realized one hour wasn't enough, so he started going to rivers and oceans to learn to swim. He didn't have a coach - there were literally fishermen watching him saying 'Son, you gotta use your legs' and trying to teach him how to coordinate his body and float.

When he got to Sydney, it took him 3 days to travel there - he'd never flown before. His jaw dropped when he saw the Olympic facilities and pool size. During practice training, he was so nervous he wouldn't even go in the water. The South African coach and others started helping him, giving him goggles and trying to teach him the day before the event.

In his qualifying heat, the two other competitors false started and were disqualified. When he finally swam, he was so exhausted before the 50-meter turn that when he finally made the turn, he stayed under so long there were gasps in the crowd - they thought he'd drowned. He finished in 1 minute 52 seconds, which was about a minute slower than it should have been.

He ended up becoming the national coach for his country decades later. He embodied that Olympic spirit that anyone anywhere in the world can do something amazing."