Olympic gold medalist and NBC Sports swimming analyst Rowdy Gaines is keeping an eye on developments leading toward the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, but a more worrisome day-to-day development is monitoring the financial impact of COVID-19 on college athletic programs and the half-dozen news alerts he gets each day about childhood drownings.

Gaines these days is on the hustings for the Aquatics Coalition, a group of more than 20 water safety and sports organizations campaigning for renewed access to public pools for learn to swim programs, physical therapy and other services that were curtailed when pools closed during the COVID-19 shutdown in the spring.

“Swimming is about social distancing,” Gaines said. “The Centers for Disease Control has said you can’t spread COVID-19 in chlorinated water. Kids go to the pool, they swim laps, they get out, they leave their swimsuit on, get I the car and go home.

“I get a text message every time a kid drowns, and I’m getting six or seven of them a day. Most could have been prevented if kids were in learn to swim programs. But pools are closed, and it’s devastating, and we’re trying to talk to policy makers to get them back open.”

City of Houston pools were closed this year because of safety concerns for lifeguards and the unpredictable nature of COVID-19 spread, said Leroy Maura Jr., senior superintendent for the Houston Parks and Recreation Department.

Maura said city pools, which traditionally shut down after Labor Day each year, are not expected to reopen until the Memorial Day weekend at the earliest next year.

Gaines, however, said he will continue to push for expanded access based in part on the premise, he said, “that swimming is the only sport that can save your life.”

While pool access for learn to swim programs is his primary focus, Gaines also is keeping a wary eye on the economic impact that COVID-19 shutdowns have taken on college athletic programs.

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The University of Iowa, which will drop men’s and women’s swimming and diving after the 2020-21 school year, is the highest-profile program to be affected, but Boise State, Connecticut and Dartmouth also have announced program cuts, and even mighty Stanford is dropping its women’s synchronized swimming team.

“I don’t even think we’ve scratched the surface on this,” Gaines said. “All the Olympic sports are in major jeopardy.”

Iowa, ironically, was scheduled to host the 22021 NCAA championships, but Gaines said the NCAA is searching for another site after the school announced its program cuts.

“Swimming doesn’t make money, granted,” Gaines said. “But thinking of my alma mater (Auburn), I know that swimmers give a ton of dough back to the university, certainly more than it takes to keep the program alive. I’m assuming that if you’re an Iowa alumnus who was a swimmer, you’re not going to give them money.

“That is the short-sided nature of this. But we are in a day and age where people are going broke, and you have to cut somewhere. Part of me understands the dynamics of profits and losses.”

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Any collegiate cuts, however, could impact USA Swimming, which has been the top national program in the world since the mid-1950s. Club programs remain the lifeblood of the sport, Gaines said, but the college system remains an important minor league feeder source.

“If I were running a college swimming program, I would be sounding the alarm and doing everything I could to go to my alumni and getting things endowed to the point where expenses are taken care of,” he said. “I would start now. When programs get cut, they usually don’t come back, although they’re trying to save Iowa.”

As he prepares for another Olympics assignment next summer, Gaines also is keeping tabs o what he expects to be a significant upheaval in the prospective pool of Olympic team hopefuls.

While the top names like Simone Manuel and Katie Ledecky will continue to thrive, Gaines said, he expects that some swimmers who would have made the 2020 team for Tokyo will not do so in 2021.

“There will be a ton of those people,” he said. “It might be mental or physical. Somebody might be a little past his or her prime but would have had a chance to make it this year, but if you add another year to their body, they might be on the outside looking in (in 2021).

“Those spots will be taken by somebody who wouldn’t have made it their summer, like high school seniors who would have been fourth or fifth at the trials.”

david.barron@chron.com

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