Eat My Bubbles ....

The water is calm.
The nerves are high.
There's maximum adrenaline pumping.
"Take your mark. Get set. GO."
(Well, it's actually a buzzer, not a "go")

It's Gregor off the block taking a strong lead into the 25 meter mark. Karter's a full body length behind on Gregor's left. On Karter's left is Benjamin, another strong contender in the 50 meter backstroke race. Passing the 30 meter mark Gregor looses some of his endurance and Benjamin seems to be taking the lead. But wait..... here comes Karter.... shooting out into the lead with a strong comeback..... and then.....


BAM!!!! Karter's hand touches the wall ahead of the rest and takes 1st place.

"YES!, KARTER!" mom yells above the crowd of hundreds of spectators.



Karter gets out of the pool and walks past dad who was officiating the race and does this excited, and almost silent, "YES!" (With an excited arm curling motion to assist in the enthusiam.) Feelings of pride and excitment fill each of us in his family and other members of our team as they watched Karter pull of the seemingly impossible win.




Gregor is a Belgian boy who has been almost impossible to beat. He's a big kid and it proves to be part of his secret weapon on swim racing success. But Karter's best event is Gregor's worst and this was Karter's chance to win something over his 2-yr arch nemesis. -- Kids are funny though. In this picture playing the video game in the hotel lobby, he is playing with Gregor (in the green/white striped shirt). They briefly mentioned the competition between them, but that's about it. They were still able to be kids!



This was only one of Karter's many successes during the European Forces Swim League Championship. In order to compete at the event you have to qualify during the swim season. He qualified in all eight of the possible events for his age bracket. He also swam two relay events with some of his fellow team mates. So, in all, over the two day event, he swam 10 races.

His successes include:

1st Place: 50 meter Backstroke
2nd Place: 200 I.M. (which was a huge surprise because he was only ranked #7 prior to the race and he cut off 18 seconds during this race) -- (He also broke a team record on this race)
3rd Place: 50 meter Breaststroke
4th Place: 100 meter Freestyle
5th Place: 200 meter Freestyle (broke a team record with this race)
6th Place: 100 I.M.
8th Place: 50 meter Freestyle
13th Place: 50 meter Fly (obviously this is HIS weakest event)