Throwback Day:
My Dangerous Experience In A Pool In Prague
I dived to the bottom of the Podoli Olympic diving pool in Prague as a young teen to retrieve a child's dropped goggles.
It was 5 meters/16.4 ft deep.
I can be a bit macho and love to be the hero who saves the day, so when a child dropped his goggles in 16 ft deep the water, I volunteered to go get them.
I ran out of breath about 3 feet before i reached the bottom. I realized that my only hope was to go all the way down and push off the floor, so i powered on downwards. I grabbed the goggles (no way was I gonna leave them after all this) and pushed off as hard as I could.
I went up fast, but I started to lose my vision about a foot from the surface. All i could see was grey fog and grainy stars. I kept kicking and managed to break through into the air, still clutching the goggles! That first breath of air was the best one of my life. It felt like the essence of life itself, like water when you are parched only more.
I was hella relieved; I hadn't been certain i would make it.
I felt so damn cool handing that kid his goggles, and waved off his thanks like it had been no big deal.
... While this was happening there was a man just casually walking around the bottom of that pool for minutes at a time. Guy had lungs like a Jeju Island diver.
Podoli pool is really cool btw. The pool was built in the 50s by architect Richard Podzemný when Prague was vying to host the Olympics (which it never did). It was cutting edge in it's time. It has two outdoor pools one of which is the 5 meter diving pool, and an indoor pool inside a building shaped like a wave. This building probably inspired future architects like Santiago Calatrava.
It's now used as a really cool public city pool, with a water slide for the kids, and is considered a National Historic Monument.
