By AccuWeather staff writer
Published Aug. 7, 2020 3:49 PM | Updated Aug. 10, 2020 12:34 PM
American swimmer and two-time Olympic gold medalist Cullen Jones, 36, describes his love for swimming as "humble."
Wanting to nurture his love for the water when he was 5 years old, Jones' mother decided to take the family on a trip to Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom, a popular amusement and water park near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
"Lo and behold, I wanted to follow my dad on the biggest ride there," Jones told AccuWeather reporter Dexter Henry in a Skype interview.
Cullen Jones smiles after his heat in the men's 50-meter freestyle semifinal at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials, Friday, July 1, 2016, in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
They waited for an hour to ascend to the top before Jones faced a life-defining moment on his way own the ride: He flipped and then nearly drowned in the splash-down pool.
"The most important part about that story is that my parents were there, lifeguards were there. I was fully supervised and I was still able to go under water," Jones said. "I wasn't horse playing. I was doing everything I was supposed to be doing and I was still able to almost drown."
But, Jones shaped his career from that moment. He went on to learn how to swim and would later become the first African-American to hold a world record in swimming, for the 4 by 100 meter freestyle relay. The New Jerseyan set the American record in the 50-meter freestyle at the U.S. National Championships in Indianapolis, Indiana, in July 2009.
Cullen Jones competes during the 100 meter butterfly swimming event at the 2012 Charlotte UltraSwim Grand Prix in Charlotte, N.C., Friday, May 11, 2012. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)
On his journey, the USA Swimming Foundation and Phillips 66 approached him, showing him some alarming statistics.
Drowning is currently the leading cause of unintentional injury-related death among children ages 1 to 4, according to Stanford Children's Health. One in five people who die from drowning are children 14 years of age or younger, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"I started thinking about all those people that made fun of me, my family members, my own family members that didn't know how to swim, and that's why I signed on and started working with the Make A Splash Initiative with the USA Swimming Foundation and really molding what that looked like," Jones said. "And I got to tell you, it was amazing."
A class of children is taught to swim by USA Swimming Foundation ambassadors and Olympic gold medalists Missy Franklin and Cullen Jones along with Sports Illustrated Sports Kid of the Year, Reece Whitley as part of USA Swimming Foundation's Make a Splash initiative on Friday, June 1, 2018, in Washington, D.C. (Joy Asico/AP Images for USA Swimming Foundation/www.swimmingfoundation.org)
The following year, Jones partnered with the two to raise awareness on the importance of swimming through the USA Swimming Foundation's Make a Splash tour.
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The sweltering summer heat comes with the risk of drownings as people look for a way to cool off. During the summer of 2010, six teens drowned in Shreveport, Louisiana, while trying to save a friend. That year, Make A Splash changed its course, which was supposed to go through Houston, and visited Shreveport instead.
"I had [the kids] on the pool deck. They were scooting back because they didn't want to get near the water because it was a community broken," Jones said. "And within 30 minutes, I had these kids jumping to me. And it was just about changing their perception and giving them a positive experience around water. It changed my mind. It blew my mind that we could have that kind of impact."
In 2010, nearly 70% of kids in the Black community didn't know how to swim or had a low skill level, according to a study on minority swimming conducted by the University of Memphis and the USA Swimming organization, "Constrains Impacting Minority Swimming Participation Phase II." About 58% of Hispanic/Latinx children and about 42% of white children couldn't swim or had a low skill level, according to the study. Phase I of the study, conducted in 2008, had shed light on the issue of needing to teach children to swim.
A class of children is taught to swim by USA Swimming Foundation ambassadors and Olympic gold medalists Missy Franklin and Cullen Jones along with Sports Illustrated Sports Kid of the Year, Reece Whitley as part of USA Swimming Foundation's Make a Splash initiative on Friday, June 1, 2018, in Washington, D.C. (Joy Asico/AP Images for USA Swimming Foundation/www.swimmingfoundation.org)
When researchers at the University of Memphis conducted another study during 2017, similar to the first, they found an unexpected change.
"In my mind, it was like, not in my lifetime. Maybe in my son's lifetime. Maybe in my daughter's lifetime at that time," Jones said.
The numbers had moved.
The daunting 68% percentage of Black children who didn't know how to swim had dropped to 64%. The percentage had also dropped for Latinx and white children.
"For some people, they might not look at that as a big win," Jones said. "For me, that's huge because the difference is that those small gaps that you see that have now learned how to swim, you are not just teaching them. You are teaching their children. You're teaching their children because once they break that stigma and break that gap, there is an 88% chance -- 88% chance that that parent or child that knows how to swim will teach the next generation to swim."
Jones encouraged people to think about swimming lessons during the fall and winter before the chaos of summertime hits.
"Break the cycle, learn to swim. And so even with COVID, even with what's going on right now, the pools that I've seen, they have like strict time slots for people to come in and I think that's a great time to learn how to swim," Jones said.
"Learning is breaking a generational issue," Jones said.
The study from 2008 had found that an overwhelming reason as to why Black children didn't know how to swim was from an overwhelming fear of drowning passed through the generations.
"Growing up in the '90s, '80s to '90s, swimming was not what we did. 'Black people don't swim.' That's what I was always told," Jones said, adding the comments continued even after he won a gold medal.
Now, he's hoping kids will follow in his footsteps to face water without fear and continue to teach the generations beyond them.
"You have to light the past so that this young generation can follow it," Jones said.
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