Left field

In the midst of a deluge of world records at the world swimming championships, I was close to breaking the mark for the slowest ever time.

Journalists at the Rome event were given the chance to swim in the outdoor 50 metre pool just hours after Michael Phelps and Federica Pellegrini had graced the same starting blocks and water.

We were treated like the real swimmers and had to sit in the ‘call room’ where the professionals wait before their race.

The announcer boomed out the competitors on the public address system and our names appeared on the electronic scoreboard. The stands were empty but you could easily imagine 10,000 screaming fans urging you on.

Despite not having swum properly for years, I looked the part with cap, goggles and tight trunks.

It was only when we got to the blocks that I realised I had no idea how to dive into the water. This contributed to my terrible 50 freestyle time of 52.48 seconds. Phelps and the like would have finished before I’d even got halfway.

My colleague Paul Virgo expertly won his heat while fellow Reuters correspondent Ian Simpson set an astonishingly good time of 28.73. He was using one of the performance-enhancing polyurethane suits which will banned next year given all the world records they have caused.

Unfortunately for Ian his costume split at the back, as often happens with the professionals.

50 metres feels longer than it looks and the water was reasonably cold considering the hot temperatures in the Italian capital. I also had some ex-professional swimmers turned journalists like Britain’s Karen Pickering as competition

I’d previously played beach cricket with West Indies greats like Viv Richards, but all-in-all this experience probably topped that.

Shame I was so slow…

PHOTO: The pool at the Rome world championships REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay