Day 13: Great Call
At the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, swimmer Ambrose “Rowdy” Gaines powered the United States to three gold medals, winning one individual title in the 100m freestyle and swimming the anchor legs in both the 4×100 and 4x400m relays. By then, he also held 10 world records.
Now, he’s one of the most iconic voices in Olympic swimming — and on Thursday, he announced that when the Olympics return to the City of Angels in 2028, he will call his last races.
In the thirteenth daily edition of In the Village: An NBC Olympic and Paralympic podcast, titled “Day 13: Great Call,” Gaines relives some of his favorite swimming moments, walks through his typical day as an Olympic swimming broadcaster, and predicts how the U.S. will perform in LA.
“I love swimming so much,” Gaines said. “I was going down a fairly dark path in high school when I started, when I was 17, … and I made the swim team. I tried out for five sports, got cut in all of them, and I was getting ready to say, ‘Screw this, I’m going to do these naughty things I’m doing.’ But I made the swim team, and it changed my life, literally. So I love swimming so much, and I have so much respect for the kids that do what they do because I lived it myself. I just flap my mouth about a sport I love.”
Hear all of that and more on the latest episode of In the Village.
New episodes of In the Village will be released every day during the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
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