When a city staff report last week recommended that London’s oldest and busiest municipal outdoor pool, and its only 50-metre outdoor pool, be decommissioned for good, members of the public made their disapproval loud and clear.
Thousands signed their name to a petition calling for Thames Pool to remain open for public use, while others posted their disapproval on social media, or sent messages to members of the community and protective services committee, which received the report on Tuesday.
Among those voicing concern was Olympic medallist Maggie Mac Neil, who tweeted that the pool had been her training grounds before the 2021 Olympics, during which she took home three medals, including gold in the 100-metre butterfly.
On Tuesday, committee members voted to have city staff present a report by June detailing possible short-term solutions to open the pool for 2024, and to present a report sometime next year outlining in further detail all options for the pool to be rebuilt or relocated.
City staff had recommended decommissioning as a result of long-standing infrastructure issues at the pool due to its location within the floodplain. In the fall, a consulting firm found that the pool, first constructed in 1927 and redeveloped in 2010, had sustained differential movement in its floor, piping system failures and a loss of base support.
Mike Stubbs, host of London Live on 980 CFPL, caught up with Mac Neil ahead of Tuesday’s committee meeting to get her thoughts about the staff recommendation.
The interview also touched on Mac Neil’s academic career in obtaining a master’s degree at Lousiana State University, and her recent record-setting showing at the NCAA swimming championship.
Mac Neil won the 50-yard freestyle event on Thursday, setting an NCAA-record time of 20.79 seconds. A day later, she placed second in the 100-yard butterfly, and she came third on Saturday in the 100-yard freestyle.
Below is a transcription of the interview, which has been edited lightly for clarity.
Mike Stubbs: We were talking earlier on the show with all that you do, the word ‘congratulations’ must come up a lot. How many of your conversations start with the word ‘congratulations’?
Maggie Mac Neil: Nowadays, I think it is quite a lot, but each one is special and it definitely keeps in touch with certain people that I haven’t talked to in a while, and I’m always so grateful for them and their support.
MS: Well, it’s well-deserved. It is well-deserved…. We’re still waiting and listening very intently around here about what is going to happen with Thames Pool. This is something that you actually took to Twitter to express your thoughts about. What was it about the story you were hearing from all the way up here in London that had you saying, ‘You know what? I want to make my voice heard on this.’
MM: Well, I think I definitely jumped the gun when I did see that pop up on my Facebook page. I was telling my mom how I wanted to vocalize my opinion, and she’s like, ‘What did you do?’ But I’m glad, it definitely kind of got out there, and just with the platform that I have … I wanted to show some support for the facility that I’ve been swimming at for years…. But it means so much to see the support from the community and everyone that loves the pool just as much as I do, whether it’s for recreation, for lifeguarding, for competitive swimming, for swimming lessons. So there’s a variety of different reasons for why people go there and they all love it just as much as I do.
I did have a really great conversation with Mayor (Josh) Morgan (on Monday) and … we’ve had some great conversation about what we want to do moving forward. And I have no doubt that they’ll come to the best decision for the short term, and hopefully that’ll give us enough time to come up with a more permanent solution and definitely hear what the community has to say when it comes time for a permanent solution to be needed.
MS: What was it that you and Mayor Morgan talked about?
MM: We both talked about, first of all, that we both understand the safety issues, especially with the bottom of the pool cracking due to the flood that it’s experienced through climate change over the last few years. But also, he believes, just as much as I do, in the aquatic assets that we have in London … not just as far as aquatic assets go, but I think our showing in Tokyo showed that London is a big hub for sports of all sorts. Definitely we want to showcase that. But I think they’re definitely going to come up with a great solution and I’m hoping I’ll hear from him once they’ve decided and we can start to work on hopefully getting that pool open for next year.
MS: It is a 50-metre pool and we’re starting to look around and these things are pretty rare, aren’t they, especially from an outdoor standpoint?
MM: Oh, very rare…. Everyone loves swimming outside. And for me, Thames in particular served as the … it’s the end of the school year and summer’s about to start, and that some kind of training would ramp up, and you’d get out of school and enjoy spending time with your friends, whether that’s at your home pool or if you’re at Thames…. We have a lot of 50-metre pools in London and we’re very lucky. But Thames is definitely something special.
MS: This doesn’t sound like it’s just about training. This sounds like it’s more than that.
MM: Oh, for sure. And like I alluded to earlier, the reason I got into swimming was water safety, and with the Thames River being right there, I think it’s definitely a vital skill for people to learn and to have, especially in that area. But I think with the COVID pandemic shutting down the public pools, there’s quite a crop and cohort of young kids that haven’t gotten to get to swimming lessons yet, which I think is definitely important that they get that opportunity to do so.
MS: Let’s turn to this past season. Let’s turn to your international career. Let’s face it, you have just finished up year number five, well, you’re number one at LSU after doing an undergraduate at Michigan. How much does it feel like yesterday that you were diving into the water for the first time as a freshman at Michigan?
MM: No time. Before I started high school, the amount of people that are like, ‘Those four years ago by faster than you can imagine.’ I was like, ‘Ha. Yeah, right.’ My dad was telling me that, as a high school teacher, he’s seen loads of kids come and go. And then it went by fast, once you hit second year or, like, Grade 10 … then I get to college and … the five years went by even quicker, if that’s even possible. But it’s crazy to think about not just what I’ve accomplished in that time, but the obstacles and challenges that I’ve had to face over time as well.
MS: Let’s talk about those, because it’s very, very easy to point to your successes because there are an awful lot of them, but we don’t realize what’s going on behind the scenes, that this isn’t just, ‘Hey, I dive into the water, I swim, and I have success.’ It isn’t like that. So when you look at obstacles and challenges, what are you going to think about?
MM: Well, I think just looking back … I’m amazed at what I was able to do in the face of adversity. It started back even before COVID, like at Michigan, we had the common aquatic parasite cryptosporidium popped up in our pool, and we were out of it for a couple of weeks. We were bouncing around Ann Arbour and the Michigan area trying to find pools that we could train in as they kept shocking it, and it kept coming back. So that was the first of many challenges before COVID hit a couple of months later than that.
And then the amount of lockdowns I had, especially in Canada, we were a lot more strict than other countries. And then in 2021, Michigan shut down the entire athletic program for two weeks, probably about two weeks before our Big Ten conference meet in February of 2021, and then I followed that up with another two-week quarantine in Canada for Olympic trials, probably around April of 2021, and then the Olympics, and then a bunch of coaching changes since then and uprooting my life and coming to Louisiana.
But I think all of those obstacles definitely made me stronger. It’s kind of funny to look back on it, honestly, and just think of how far I’ve come over the last five years.
MS: What about the move to LSU? It was a move you didn’t necessarily have to make, but it helped you to get away from the snow, I guess, a little bit. What else did it do for you?
MM: Well, believe it or not, it was pretty cold yesterday. It was, like, zero here, and I never thought it got that cold. The fluctuations in weather has been unreal. But I think, overall, it definitely wasn’t a decision I had planned on making. I was supposed to go to California and then a couple of things fell through in that regard. But it was definitely the best decision for me.
I’ve loved this year, getting to experience new culture. I have this one friend who took me to her house and I had my first crawfish boil last Sunday right before we left for NCAAs, and I got to experience Mardi Gras. Just a bunch of things that I’ve kind of never thought I would have experienced, and I never thought I would like living down here. I mean, it’s so different. But I definitely wouldn’t change this experience for the world.
MS: Love it. Well, you’re at the point where you’ve started to break your own records. Can you put that into perspective when you’re breaking your own world record, something you did this year?
MM: I mean, coming in, breaking records is always like, I don’t want to say the goal of swimming, but swimming is very time-centric. It’s very objective and you’re just trying to get faster. So, I mean, records are meant to be broken, so I think it was great that we were able to break … I think we broke most of them, the school records this year, so that’s really exciting to be a part of. When you start to break your own, I think it just raises the bar and it makes it a lot more challenging. But it’s always something I’m ready and excited for that challenge.
MS: One last thing, and that is now your academic career comes to a close, so how does your life change? What do you do now in getting yourself set for what’s next?
MM: Well, For me, it’s always been ‘academics come before athletics,’ so that was always something I knew in high school and even in university undergrad and now that I’m doing my master’s degree. I think I’ve always found that I do better in the pool when I’m kind of focused on something else outside of the pool. Usually in the summer, I always took summer classes so I wouldn’t just be focused on swimming, so that was something really important to me, especially leading into Paris next year. I’m currently on my second semester of my master’s program, planning to finish up in May of 2024 and then hopefully take a break from school and focus on the Olympics and then we’ll see what’s next after that.