The B Lane Swimmer – Holly Witteman

A number of years ago, I joined a Master’s swim team. I was doing triathlons at the time, and the swim was my weakest leg. The team I joined divided the pool into four lanes: A (fastest swimmers), B (next fastest), C (next fastest) and D (slowest.) Workouts were organized accordingly; faster swimmers were assigned more and/or faster laps. I came to the team as a very strong swimmer compared to the average person. These were not average people. I was nowhere near the level of these guys. (They were almost all men, though every so often there would be one other woman at practice.) So I started in the D lane and got lots of remedial stroke correction. Everyone around me was very kind to me, I slowly improved, and finally made it into the C lane. The people whom I had swam next to for months welcomed me warmly. I noticed that when I swam next to the B lane swimmers, they were not nearly as kind and friendly as the C lane swimmers had been when they were my next-lane neighbours. The A lane

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• Siddhant Sharma