He Learned to Swim at Nine Months Old

On November 19, 1915, a group of men in Winter Haven organized themselves into the Twenty Lakes Boat Course Club and began digging.

The city sat among lakes connected by shallow channels. Moving citrus by horse and buggy across Florida sand was slow work. Moving it by water, lake to lake through a system of man-made canals, made commercial sense. Bob Gernert, a student of Winter Haven history and former executive director of the city's chamber of commerce, has said the first canals were built for economic reasons: to move citrus on water instead of horse and buggy.

Two weeks before the end, the members gathered to discuss damage to the canals from speeding boats. The club held its last meeting on April 23, 1917. It went bankrupt.

In May 1919 the Florida Legislature created the Winter Haven Lake Region Boat Course District to finish the work. By the early 1920s the southern chain was navigable — sixteen lakes connected by canals from south of Winter Haven to Lake Alfred, all engineered for commerce. The Florida land boom arrived almost simultaneously, and lots on the edge of the water sold.

Dick Pope Sr. opened Cypress Gardens on the shore of Lake Eloise in 1936, a botanical garden that added water ski performances, bleachers, and cameras pointed at the water. By the 1950s, world championships were being held there. Esther Williams filmed on Lake Eloise.

Water skiers performing a pyramid formation at Cypress Gardens, Florida The Cypress Gardens water ski team — the show that ran on the chain for decades. Wikimedia Commons / public domain.

Buddy Gaines and Jettie Ann Coltharp came to Winter Haven as performers. They skied on Lake Eloise in front of crowds. They met on the water, married, and stayed.

Their son, Ambrose Gaines IV, was born February 17, 1959, on the edge of the chain. "My parents water-skied for a place called Cypress Garden," he said years later. "So I grew up on a lake, and I learned how to swim when I was nine months old."

He played football, baseball, and basketball first. He was seventeen years old, a junior at Winter Haven High School, before he entered the water with any intention of competing. Two years later he held a scholarship to Auburn University. He became an eight-time NCAA champion and seventeen-time U.S. national champion, and he held world records in the 100-meter and 200-meter freestyle. In 1980 he was the best in the world at his event and was expected to go to Moscow.

Rowdy Gaines, left, congratulated by Soviet swimmer Sergey Smyryagin at the 1983 World Championships Rowdy Gaines, left, congratulated by Soviet swimmer Sergey Smyryagin at the 1983 World Championships. Dutch National Archives / public domain.

The United States boycotted the Moscow Games to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Rowdy Gaines was twenty-one years old. He stepped away from the sport.

He came back and made the 1984 team. On July 31, in Los Angeles, he touched the wall first in the men's 100-meter freestyle. His time was 49.80. He won two more gold medals on relay teams before the week was out.

Seven years later, in August 1991, he was in Hawaii when Guillain-Barré syndrome came on — the immune system attacking the peripheral nerves, a partial paralysis that lasted more than a month. His mother Jettie spoke to the Los Angeles Times from a Honolulu hospital. He was thirty-two.

He recovered. He did not return to competition. He became the voice of swimming for NBC, calling every Olympic Games from Barcelona in 1992 forward.

The pool at the Chain O' Lakes Complex in Winter Haven carries his name.