First Madrid Competition

After two months in the competition squad, Karl got his first taste of the competitions in Madrid (Benjamin). It was a challenging event, with a grueling schedule: 100m freestyle followed shortly by the 200m breaststroke—a tough combination for any swimmer. Karl showed a great improvement in the 100m freestyle, clocking 1:30.24 (splits: 0:41.18 and 0:49.06). This marked a significant improvement from his previous 50m result in June (0:44.60), dropping 3.42 seconds over a longer distance.

Beginnings

The beginning is a very delicate time. Karl started swimming when he was 6, but we had no luck finding a proper pool. Naïveté of his parents almost discouraged him from swimming as it turned out that municipal swimming pools in Madrid did not teach proper technique. Someone mentioned that if you want to get quality, you need to go private and pay. We tried M-86, but they didn’t like what they saw and we went to Real Canoe where he started the worst of the group and finished the first and got invitation to the team.