| Near Miss A Bronx swimmer was fast
enough to compete in Sydney yet lost his chance at
Olympic fame because of a bureaucratic snag
Maria A. Castro
Bronx Journal Staff Reporter
While most of the best athletes in the world were
fighting against time to win medals in Australia, Donstan
Charles took a couple of weeks off. He stopped waking up
at 4:00 in the morning, as he has for over five
consecutive years. In the evening, he’d rest on the
sofa in his Bronx apartment and watch TV. The only time
he budged, it seems, was to fetch snacks – popcorn
with extra butter and a can of soda.
Make no mistake - Donstan's no couch potato. He’s a
swimmer, one good enough to qualify for the Sydney Games.
His best time, just under a minute and 12 seconds in the
100 meter breaststroke,would have beaten a number of
Olympians such as Joe Atuhaire from Uganda (who finished
at 1:22:35), Kieran Chan from Papua New Guinea (1:13:34),
or Antonio Leon form Paraguay (1:08:60), all of whom
competed in the 2000 games. Instead, Charles’s dream
of going to the Olympic Games to represent his home
country, Dominica, faded away just weeks before the games
began. A decision from the Dominica Olympic Committee
forced him to stay in New York, gazing at the times of
rivals he could have beaten as they were posted in
telecasts from Australia. And worse still, Charles knew
all the while that Dominica, an island of the Lesser
Antilles in the Caribbean Sea, had no representation for
the 100-meter breaststroke.
He’s puzzled to say the least. The decision of the
Dominica Olympic Committee of not taking him to Sydney
could not have been based on the regulations set by FINA,
the Federation Internationale De Natation Amateur, which
is the international organization in charge of setting
the standard qualifying times, rules and regulations for
any Olympic sport performed in a swimming pool. FINA’s
rules state that in swimming meets, every country has the
right to enter one athlete in each event, regardless of
their times, and Dominica only sent one swimmer to
compete for the 50 meter freestyle, and no one for the
100 meter breaststroke. Unfortunately, the attempts to
obtain information from the Dominica Olympic Committee on
why Donstan Charles was denied the chance to participate
at Sydney have not been successful. Charles certainly
followed procedures. Peter Kiernan, his coach of many
years from Lehman College, made sure to send all the
required entry forms in on time. Charles had set his
times in official swimming competitions after May 25th
1999, as required by FINA, and he had constantly informed
the committee on his status.
All the Dominican committee provided as a reply to
inquiries, weeks before the games, was that he had not
trained hard enough and that for the next Olympiad, they
would consider him as a priority, since he had posted
very good qualifying times.
Donstan Charles was born in Dominica, on October 19,
1974. He came to the United States at the age of 15
because his mother had moved to the Bronx, New York, and
did not plan to go back to the Caribbean island. He
attended Evander Childs High School on Gun Hill Road and
started swimming competitively only because there was no
other way for him to have access to a pool. "Back
then I was one of the slowest swimmers in the team,”
he chuckles. “I had to swim in the lane with the
slowest people, and I looked awful, I would swim with
those long, long shorts," he remembers.
Today, Charles is 26 and has graduated form Herbert H.
Lehman College with a B.S. in Economics and Accounting
and a grade point average of 3.6. At the same time that
he was completing a degree, he kept swimming, steadily
improving his times in the 100-meter breaststroke, and
representing Lehman College in collegiate competitions
for four years. All the while, he was building himself a
personal record to use as his pass to the Olympic Games.
Charles is a serious trainer. Typically, he wakes up at
4:00AM, kisses his wife goodbye, and rushes to the
swimming pool to start practice at 5:30. At 7:30,he
scurries off to the showers to be ready to go to work on
time. He puts in eight hours at B. C. Harris Publishing
Company in White Plains where he works as an accountant.
Then, at five, he goes back to the gym, and lifts
weights. If he has any energy left, he’ll swim some
more or play water polo. By 9:30PM, he goes back home,
to "wifey" as he calls his wife Deborah. Sundays
are his only rest from the routine; Charles is sure to
spend all of Saturday mornings in the gym as well.
"Actually the hardest part of training for me is
jumping in the water,” he admits. “I usually
take about five minutes just staring at the water before
I jump in, but once I am in the water, I try to enjoy the
entire workout." Ironically. Charles still trains
with Selwyn Gibson, a friend he’s known since high
school who happened to share the slow lane with him at
Evander Childs.
According to Freddy Sanchez, a student of Lehman College
and one of Charles' swimming comrades, Donstan Charles is
a hard working athlete that has potential to improve his
times. Sanchez believes that if Charles had more time for
swimming he could become one of the top 20 competitors in
the world. "Unfortunately he can't give 100% of his
time to swimming, he has a wife and an accounting career
to take care of," says Sanchez, who holds the
100-meter, and 200-meter backstroke records of Lehman
College, and is also trained by Peter Kiernan, the Lehman
Lighting coach.
That said, Sanchez will tell you that Charles is probably
one of the most dedicated and responsible swimmers of all
those who come to train at the Apex. "Even through
the hardest times, the idea of quitting never crossed my
mind," says Charles who explains how he’s kept
swimming even when it was difficult.
One thing that keeps Charles motivated is his hope to one
day repeat the great experience of representing his
country in a big event, as he did in the Pan American
Games in Venezuela in August of 1999. Even though he
posted one of his worst times (1:14:89, adding over 2
full seconds to his best recorded time of 1:12:81),
Charles says he found himself even more inspired than
ever before. "It was the greatest thing ever in my
swimming career. I was tired. I had been in an airplane
for so long and the time difference really got to me. But
while I was walking in to the opening ceremony, children
came up to us to get autographs. I felt very special and
I knew that all those years of hard work were paying off,
although not monetarily," the accountant says.
As a show of his grit, Charles broke his record again in
the Senior Metropolitan SC Championships held in New York
in February 2000 six months after the Pan American Games,
finishing with a time of 1:11:92. That time would have
placed him at least in the 61st place overall in the
preliminaries of the 2000 Sydney Olympiad, where only 68
entrants in the breaststroke qualified.
Although Charles knows that he would have not set a world
record or even have made it to finals to compete against
athletes like Domenico Fioravanti, the Italian Gold
Medallist, or Ed Moses the American Silver medalist, he
is certain that he could have represented Dominica with
dignity. He also knows that there still might be a chance
for him to go to the next Olympiad in 2004. The Dominica
Olympic Committee has promised to consider Charles the
next time all the more since they turned him down this
year, opting instead to take only four athletes –
two swimmers and two runners - in track and field events.
At 5 feet 8 inches, Charles might not have the height
advantage that human torpedo, famed Australian swimmer
Ian Thorpe at 6 feet, 4 inches may have. Still, he’s
confident that he will go to the next Olympic Games, no
matter what the challenge. "Sometimes I feel
frustrated because of my age, I feel like I am too old to
go to the next Olympiad, since I will be almost
30-years-old then. But then I think it over and remember
that Dara Torres is making it big time, and she is 32.
That gives me hope," he says.
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