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| Melody Jameson Photo
She may be standing in her family room in Sun City Center, but the lack of water does not deter Jean Troy as she demonstrates one series of motions she uses while training in the pool for a competitive speed swimming meet. |
SUN CITY CENTER - Jean Troy is one of the swiftest women on earth.
Like winning race car drivers, she outdistances the competition with speed in the turns. Like successful marathon runners, she works on strength and endurance. Like prized jockeys, she’s always aware of the form she’s cutting in the competitive environment.
But this small, compact woman, has not set her national and world records in a car, on foot or in the saddle. It’s not wind resistance or land surface or large straining bodies closing in on her that she trains so vigorously to overcome.
Her element is water. She’s a speed swimmer, excelling in two primary categories – the individual medley and the freestyle. Last year, doing what she enjoys, she set 22 national records and 15 on the world level. It’s an accomplishment that has elevated the five-foot-four blonde to the just-announced ranks of World Masters Swimmers of the Year for 2007.
Oh, and by the way, she’s also celebrated her 80th birthday.
Jean Troy’s accomplishments, however, are not fulfillment of a childhood dream or even the ambition of a young adult. In fact, she was a middle-aged mother of three before she was the least bit serious about it.
Growing up in a small inland community of North Carolina, she was introduced to the environment of something approaching a competition-sized swimming pool during the 1930s, she recalls, when a public pool was built in her home town as a Works Project Administration (WPA) undertaking. Backyard pools certainly were not common during the depression era and, like any 11-year-old, she was attracted to the outdoor facility.
Pool play, though, would remain nothing but amusement for decades. She would relocate from her hometown to Wilmington, N.C., for college and then to Charlotte, N.C., where she would meet Ed Troy, her future husband. After their marriage, the young electrical engineer and his bride lived in different locales along the eastern seaboard, eventually settling in “that other Wilmington,” Delaware, headquarters for DuPont, Ed Troy’s career employer.
In time, there would be three children. And, as America enjoyed a post-war boom, Ed and Jean dedicated themselves to their responsibilities, overseeing his career and their growing offspring.
The family enjoyed sailing on Chesapeake Bay, swimming, even scuba diving. But, as near as she was to water, competitive swimming was not even close, she notes. Then, though, with the children in school, she looked around for something more to engage her interest.
And the local YMCA became a focus.
Given lots of latitude, she remembers, she organized team racing in the Y pool. She coached. Then, she, too, began swimming laps. Along came a meet and she entered. She was 45 years old and she was hooked. Looking back, she does not remember that first meet particularly well, but knows she enjoyed the thrill of accomplishment. “You dread it, you’re scared to death, you’re worried. But when it’s all over, you’re so happy!”
Ultimately Jean Troy became the Wilmington Y’s aquatic director overseeing a staff of 25 instructors. And it was that satisfying joy after a competition that drove her.
The children did as children do, left home to chart their own courses. Ed retired. The couple sailed their 42-foot ketch around the Bahamas, even living aboard for awhile. And, Jean entered meets from time to time, taking home her share of wins. “It’s not winning or losing that’s important,” she says today, “it’s the competition.”
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| Walls of awards recognize Jean Troy’s achievements as a competitive speed swimmer. This one in the Troy dining room contains only a few of the numerous plaques acknowledging the national and world records she has broken during the last year. Now 80, Troy began swimming competitively in middle age, continuing to tumble one record after another as she has grown older - and better. |
To which Ed responds proudly “that’s only because she always wins.”
In 1996, the Troys found their way to Florida. And Jean began competitive swimming with a new seriousness. She joined the Florida Maverick Masters, a swimming club for excelling competitors and, for the first time, engaged a coach.
Since then, it’s been one award after another – more than 200 competitive meets all told and so many recognitions they overflow two walls in the Troy’s Hacienda Drive home.
The string of record-breaking performances leading to the World Masters accolade began in Maryland in March, 2007. Competing in the 80 to 84 age bracket, Jean disposed of three standing world records by doing the 200-meter freestyle in a fraction over three minutes, 26 seconds, a 100 meter individual medley (butterfly, back and breast stroke) in one minute, 56.65 seconds and a 200 meter IM in four minutes, 7.66 seconds. But those were short course records.
Last summer, she took on and put away five long course world records for women in her age group; three of them in 100, 200 and 400 meter freestyle competition, plus 200 and 400 meter IMs.
It was this impressive performance that made her one of just 12 World Masters Swimmers for 2007, standing among male and female competitors from Great Britain, Denmark, Japan and the U.S. “It’s the top, the award I’m proudest of,” she says, “you can’t do any better.” She also is the eldest of the six women in this accomplished group where the ages range from 26 to 95 years.
In its profile acknowledging Jean’s achievements, the editors of Swimming World Magazine noted “Troy has become a record breaking machine and seems to be swimming faster all the time.”
For her part, though, Jean says the “record breaking machine” is slowing down. She’s planning to compete in just one more meet – later this month in Ft. Lauderdale – that requires the rigorous daily training she been engaging in early mornings in the indoor pool of Sun City Center’s north campus. After that, she suggests, she’ll be hanging up the “ugly” air and water repellant swim suit that aids her swift, unimpeded movement through pool lanes, putting away the training paddles that help build arm and upper body strength.
She definitely will not stop swimming, though. It’s a great way to relieve tension, she points out, it’s healthful and “it’s emotionally satisfying.”
Nonetheless, there’s also a new challenge awaiting. It’s something she’s tried in the past but not mastered. Firmly, she says “I’m going to get back to tai chi.”
©2008 Melody Jameson
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