That night, my mom said goodbye to me and gave me twenty dollars of spending money. I’d never had that much money in my pocket. I think she was happy for me. I mean, I hoped that she was happy for me. The hard part was that I couldn’t tell her I was going to miss her, because I wasn’t. I was just so happy to be spreading my wings and getting away from my parents.
Still, I gave her a hug and a kiss goodbye, and then off I went the next morning on the bus with twenty-six other swimmers, three coaches, and two chaperones.
We would be visiting Russia, East Germany, West Germany, and Denmark, among other places. As the plane rumbled down the runway and we lifted off from Houston, my mind began dreaming about what it would be like. I knew we’d be swimming over there, but I was more intrigued with the idea of travel and exploration. What would it be like? What would the people sound like? This was going to be so exciting.
On the plane we also learned that we were all going to receive a “per diem.” I had no idea what that was. Gary Hall, who I swam with at the Huntington Beach Aquatic Club, explained it to me.
“It’s spending money, Shirley,” he said. “We are given spending money each day.”
“For what?” I asked.
“Whatever you want,” he said.
To me, that was simply the coolest thing ever. Gary was such a doll and I really appreciated how he kind of looked after me on that trip. He was a few years older and had already won a silver medal at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City for his second place finish in the 400-meter individual medley. Two years after that, he broke the world record in the 200-meter butterfly. I was just so impressed by him.
Before getting to Russia, we stopped over at Shannon Airport in Ireland. I distinctly remember seeing all of the wonderful green colors of the country as our plane gently descended through the wispy clouds. Throughout the flight, most of the swimmers had been chatting and giggling and gossiping together. But I just sat by the window, quietly soaking in the trip.
We didn’t linger in Ireland. When we landed, I had my first taste of having to run through airport terminals in a crazy rush to make a connecting flight, which would happen a lot with the swim teams I traveled with. We found our connection, took off, and soon landed in Russia or, as it was called then, the USSR.
After disembarking in Moscow, we were whisked away into a debriefing room and a stern Russian official explained to us how we were to behave in Russia and any other communist country that we happened to be visiting. With a scowl on his face, he explained to all of us through his thick accent, “You are not to take anything from any of the hotels. Not a towel. Not an ashtray. Not a pen. Do you understand? Nothing. And you are never to say anything about communism, anywhere. You don’t talk about communism in your hotel room or on the elevator. There will be somebody listening to you at all times, and we will know if you break this rule.”
Finally, we were admonished to not wear any revealing clothing, including shorts. And with that, we checked in at the Rossiya Hotel.
The Rossiya was a massive, five-star international hotel that at the time was registered in The Guinness Book of World Records as the largest hotel in the world. (It would be surpassed by the Excalibur in Las Vegas in 1990, but it remained the largest hotel in Europe until it closed in 2006.) The place just went on forever. It was twenty-one stories high and had 3,200 rooms, 240 suites, a post office, a health club, a nightclub, a movie theater, a barbershop, and even a police station with jail cells behind unmarked black doors. It was massive, and we had a fun time exploring it. We couldn’t talk about communism, but at least we were free to wander a little bit and absorb some of the atmosphere.
I was pinching myself; I was so excited to be there. I just couldn’t believe that I was wandering around a giant hotel in Russia. Our first night there, we had dinner in the hotel’s main dining room, and I had my first taste of real European bread. It was one of the most wonderful things I had ever tasted. All crusty on the outside and so fresh, as if it had been taken from an oven only moments beforehand (I’m sure it had been).
Just about every one of us ordered steak. I remember thinking, wow, if the bread was that good, the meat is probably going to be out of this world. But we ended up getting what looked like a healthy slab of beef liver, and most of us went back to eating the bread.
I’ll never forget spending that first night in our spacious room. There were two swimmers in each room. The first thing I noticed were the blankets on the beds. They were just like the ones I had at home: comforters enveloped in comforter covers. Everyone else was saying how cool the blankets were, and I nonchalantly told them that I had the same thing at home. The other swimmers looked at me kind of funny, as if they didn’t believe me.
Within just a day or so, we were slated to swim against the USSR team in Minsk. We all piled into the bus and made the trip over to the pool. On the way there, I have to admit that I wasn’t too happy. Since I had qualified for the team by swimming the 100, I figured I would be swimming the 100-meter freestyle on this team. But the coaches thought it was a fluke that I’d made the team. They decided to put in another girl they thought had a better chance of winning. As for me, they were going to put me in an outside lane. I’d be swimming along in the race just for the experience; my lane wouldn’t count.
Our bus pulled up to the ancient-looking swimming facility, and we all piled off and got ready for the meet. When it came time for the 100, there was little doubt in my mind that I was going to win. In fact, I led the entire way. But of course, even though I came in first, none of it counted. The girl who swam in my place technically came in second after me, but officially, she was first.
There was a lavish ceremony that night to give out the awards. I watched the other girl receive her first-place Russian crystal bowl along with ornately carved Russian nesting dolls and a huge bouquet of red roses, and I grew irritated. I thought that it should’ve been me up there. Little did I know that this was, in a sense, preparing me for the future.
That night, I missed Flip terribly. He never would have let something like this happen. But that’s one thing I learned about the international teams: your coaches don’t go along with you. You’re automatically thrown into a new group of coaches that have their own style and strategy, and it doesn’t always work out the way you want it to.
I chalked it up to a learning experience, and got back to enjoying the trip. The good news was that the coaches were re-thinking things after seeing how I swam. “Okay, Shirley,” one of them said, almost begrudgingly, “you will now swim in the official races.” From then on, I never swam in a practice lane again.
After Minsk, we went back to Moscow, where we would have some free time. We saw the Kremlin and St. Basil’s Cathedral. We also saw a round, raised cement circle. When we asked what it was, our guide said, “It’s where they used to chop people’s heads off.” We saw the building that housed Lenin’s body, called Lenin’s Mausoleum, in Red Square. We also went into a huge and well-known department store called GUM, where I was elbowed out of way by aggressive Russian shoppers. Moscow was fascinating, and I loved visiting there.
Next, it was on to Denmark, and then Amsterdam.
The red light district in Amsterdam was unlike anything I had ever seen before. There were storefronts that stretched three to four blocks long, and in each window was a different girl that could be had for the evening. Behind the glass, they would be doing various things—knitting, reading, or even just sitting there watching television. There were strange aromas in the air and everyone on the team stared wide-eyed at all the various illicit trade taking place around us. Our chaperones didn’t let us linger there, though. We were just sightseers, stumbling upon new places to explore. It was all kind of vague and mysterious to me, and as wild as it was, it represented something that seemed so exotic. This is what people see when they travel, I remember thinking to myself.
While in Amsterdam, I had the opportunity to swim against Enith Brigitha, who would become the first black athlete to win a swimming medal at the Olympics