Swimming for the gold
The 2020 Summer Olympics haven’t even announced a location yet, but its hopeful athletes are already in training.
Bay Oaks pool’s part-time lifeguard, Hunter Vos, is on track to qualify for the next Olympic Games.
He placed in a meet held in North Carolina the weekend of September 9 which sends him on to the next tier: the qualifier meet for the 2020 Olympics, which will be held late next year.
Vos swam the 50-meter freestyle in 20.14 seconds.
The regime for an Olympic-hopeful is not your average workout routine.
The 18-year-old beach resident gets up each morning to swim for three hours or more, both at the Bay Oaks pool before work and in the open water of the Gulf of Mexico. Then, he studies for his degree in physical education at Florida Southwestern College and works at Bay Oaks. After school and work, he goes to the gym to life weights or goes for runs.
“Swimming is my hobby,” he said with a chuckle. “I feel like I’ve gotten so far with it, it would be a shame to stop.”
The Netherlands-native started swimming when he was in middle school. His father, who is Dutch, works for an international oil company, so he grew up moving around the world with his dad and his mom, who is American. He speaks English, Dutch, German and Italian.
His first love was soccer, but when he and his family moved back to the Netherlands, it was often too cold outside to play. He decided to give swimming a try, and the swim coach offered him a spot on the school swim team. The next week, Vos competed in the 2012 Netherlands Championships and won the 50-meter free and the 200-meter butterfly.
Since then, he’s been hooked.
“I’m really passionate about it,” he said.
He participated in a year of high school in the U.S., attending Joplin High School in Joplin, Mo., on a swimming scholarship. He moved to Fort Myers Beach in May to start swimming in the U.S.with his goal aiming to swim on the USA team for the Olympics. He and his family used to vacation in the area.
“We moved around a lot when I was a kid, so it’s nice to be in one place,” he said.
Although most of his life is taken up with swimming, he likes to paddleboard and said he’s made a lot of friends through work.
Now, he’s training on plans that his old coaches send him, but he hopes to find a team nearby to join.
“I need to boost up my training, find a team with a coach who will be on me,” he said. “Having a team pushes you farther.”
When he’s finished swimming competitively, he wants to be a USA Team coach.
The Olympics are years off, but he has to place in the top eight swimmers during the qualifying meet to move on to the international competition.
“I’m a little nervous, when you have a goal you always have a little anxiety,” he said. “But if you really want it, you have to put the effort into it.”