What is the worst swimming-related experience you have ever had?

Not my worst but most recent is swimming at Boca De Igauna in Mexico coming in contact with the the resident croc Poncho out of his pond and in the ocean about ten feet from me.

It was my first time on a swim team (was the summer between 3rd and 4th grade.) One day, at the beginning of practice, some kid I didn't know decided to push me into the pool. Wouldn't have mattered too much had my wrist not come smashing down on the cement and tile gutter rail. Um... yeah... that sucker hurt. Being that I had a swim meet that night (my first ever!) I didn't really say much, but didn't put in a full workout either. I swam a few events that night but remember pulling out of one. Three days later, I finally say something to my mom about the wrist problem... sure enough, we find out that it's broken. I missed the rest of the season, and still have problems with the wrist to this day.

definitely happened early this July... I was a "drop in" swimmer at a Masters practice when I was working out of town...I smashed (and I mean smashed...) my heel on the opening of a bulkhead - VERY painful, humiliating, and a long time to heal. It took the rest of the summer before I could put full weight on it...

Wow swimkim, thats horrible. Natural selection about took you out!

When I was a boy we used to swim at the pool on a Tuesday night the night that the pro wrestlers had their wrestling ring set up in the middle of the pool. We would swim under the ring and play tag that is were I had the most horrible thing happen, while under the ring a pretty young girl gave me my first kiss from anyone except my family. Horrifying!!! After that I was at the pool every Tues night to play tag.

i swam in a solar heated, 50mx25y pool in high school/aau in the late seventies. one day the coaches were all elsewhere and we all put on our fins and swam under the pool covers. we were playing tag, etc. we stayed near the edges and could get a breath at the edge of the pool - overflow gutter system. then some of us got daring and swam around the middle and pushed the covers up a couple of inches to get a breath. the surface tension held the covers down pretty tight, so it was hard to do this. well, i was out in the middle of the pool and one of the guys grabbed me from behind and scared my air out of me. i tried several times to push the cover up to get a breath but couldn't. i went back down underwater and swam as fast as i could to the edge - still with my fins on. i blacked out right before the wall. luckily, another guy saw all of this happening and met me at the wall just as i blacked out. he pulled me out of the pool and i gagged and sputtered, but came to and was okay. it scared us all to death, and we never played under the pool covers again! but, we did try to play on top of them...

So my former coach had a story about a highschool team member. The guy was doing 50m backstroke. Right after the start, the guy slips under the ropes and is swimming in the lane of another competitor. The team is on deck yelling for him to correct his position to no avail. At the last minute he slips back under the ropes and into his own lane. And of course, because he finished the race in the lane he started in, he wasn't disqualified. :D