FGCU swimmers head to Olympics: FGCU swimmers Danielle Beaubrun and Karen Vilorio are headed to the Olympics for St. Lucia and Honduras. Video by Amanda Inscore.
FGCU's Karen Vilorio of Honduras, left, and Danielle Beaubrun of St. Lucia practice at the school on Wednesday. / Amanda Inscore/news-press.com
FGCU Olympians
Danielle Beaubrun
100-meter breaststroke
Country: St. Lucia
Age: 22
Qualifying time: 1:10.63
Shot at semifinals: Will need to go faster than 1:09.00 for shot at top 16.
Quote: “I’m going to go out there and really do it for her. I know she’s watching.” – Beaubrun on her late mother and coach, Karen Beaubrun, who died in December after battling cancer
Karen Vilorio
100-meter backstroke
Country: Honduras
Age: 19
Qualifying time: 1:06.18
Shot at semifinals: Trimming two seconds from best time of 1:06.05 may not be enough.
Quote: “I’ve been talking most with Dani about it. She tells me whatever happens, we’re going to have fun. It’s the Olympics. I should just give it all.” – Vilorio on her teammate’s 2008 Olympics participation
Past Local Olympians
Summer
| Name | Year | Event | City |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nancy Rios | 2008 | Windsurfing | Naples |
| Chad Senior | 2000, 04 | Modern pentathlon | Fort Myers |
| Name | Year | Event | City |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liston Bochette* | 1992, 94, 98 | Bobsleigh | Fort Myers |
| Brian Shimer | 1988, 92, 94, 98, 2002 | Bobsleigh | Naples |
| Jason Smith | 2010 | Curling | Cape Coral |
FGCU Olympians event times
Sunday, July 29
100 backstroke heats: 5 a.m. EST (10 a.m. BST)
100 breaststroke heats: 5:51 a.m. EST (10:51 a.m. BST)
100 breaststroke semifinals: 2:48 p.m. EST (7:48 p.m. BST)
100 backstroke semifinals: 3:53 p.m. EST (8:53 p.m. BST)
Monday, July 30
100 backstroke finals: 2:49 p.m. EST (7:49 p.m. BST)
100 breaststroke finals: 3:13 p.m. EST (8:13 p.m. BST)
BST=British Summertime
More
Wearily clinging to the side of the pool, almost gasping for air as they lifted their heads out of the water in a shared lane at FGCU, Danielle Beaubrun and Karen Vilorio groaned at their coach’s instructions before setting off again for another set, at speed.
The Olympics don’t come along very often.
“You just (want to) know when you leave the pool,” Beaubrun said, “that you have given it everything.”
Less than three weeks before the start of Olympics, which commence this week in London, Beaubrun, Vilorio and FGCU coach Neal Studd were in the final days of intense training for what is arguably the most internationally relevant milestone yet in FGCU’s dozen years with intercollegiate sports.
On Sunday, in the 5 a.m. hour locally and between 10 and 11 a.m. in London, the school’s first current Olympians will hit the water on the second competition day in the 30th Summer Games.
Beaubrun, 22, from the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia, and Vilorio, 19, from Honduras, will compete in the 100-meter breaststroke and 100-meter backstroke, respectively.
“We’re all excited,” said school athletic director Ken Kavanagh. “(These) are proud moments.”
Beaubrun swam the same event in the 2008 Olympics while she was still in high school in Jacksonville, and Finnish distance swimmer Eva Lehtonen also competed in China prior to joining FGCU.
But this week’s appearances are the first for active FGCU athletes in arguably the greatest gathering in sports.
Studd, who is from the town of Ipswich, about 45 minutes outside London, also is in London as the official St. Lucia swim coach, a role he’s held to coach Beaubrun in other international events in the past year.
“It’s going to be a great experience,” said Studd, who will have a secondary role as tour guide after fulfilling his duties as coach. “I’m very serious with them. We’re not going for the ride.”
Beaubrun, a senior engineering student who signed with FGCU in the summer of 2009, was 42nd in the 100-meter breaststroke in the 2008 Olympics in a time of one minute, 12.85 seconds.
In October she won the consolation final of the Pan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1:10.63 to qualify for London.
But Studd said she may need to drop her personal-best by as much as two seconds to have a shot at a top-16 time and appearance in the semifinals, which also will be Sunday in the 100 breast and 100 back.
“I think I can do it. I know I can do it,” said Beaubrun, who left for London on Saturday with Studd. “It’s just a matter of going there and mentally preparing myself for the best.”
In the FINA World Championships last summer in China, Beaubrun was 19th in the 50-meter breaststroke, cutting more than eight-tenths of a second off her qualifying time and missing the semifinals by only three-tenths. She also swam a then-personal best 1:11.34 in the 100 breast to finish 32nd in the world.
“I think my swimming has come to a completely different level (since 2008),” Beaubrun said. “I’m more experienced. I know what to expect. I’ve swum in so many more higher-end meets against competition that I’ll be swimming against in London.”
Vilorio, who left for London early last week with the Honduran Olympic team, was among those still chasing a qualifying time this spring before finally swimming a personal-best 1:06.18 in the 100-meter backstroke in a Gulf Coast Swim Team meet at FGCU in mid-May.
“I was in so much stress for a month or two months trying to make the time,” said Vilorio, who will be an FGCU sophomore in the fall. “Once I did it, I just couldn’t believe it. I was in shock. It took me a while to actually be like, ‘OK. I’m going.’”
Vilorio’s qualifying time was nearly a second better than her previous best, a 1:07.0 from October’s Pan Am Games. Only a week ago she dropped her personal best down to 1:06.05, but she knows she’ll have to drop two seconds or more to have a shot at the semifinals.
“Right now I’m sore and tired,” she said during the last days of hard training. “But I do feel like I’m in a good place. I’m really strong right now. We’ve been working hard. There’s some days I can’t even move out of bed after practice. But it’s all worth it. That just makes me know I’m prepared.”
While focused on the competition, Studd is eager for a homecoming that will include a handful of trips with his swimmers to his parents’ home in Ipswich, which Studd said is known for artists, poets and countryside and of course has the requisite castle or two.
“There’s some pretty stuff that perhaps I took for granted,” Studd said. “We’re just going for dinner. But it gives them some activities that gets them out of the same cafeteria, three meals a day, back to the room.”
Beaubrun and Vilorio considered returning home after their events to see family before returning to FGCU fall classes only a week later. But they opted to spend the extra time in London through to the closing ceremonies, which Beaubrun did not see in 2008.
“I’m hoping to sightsee and see other events, just really get the full and entire experience,” she said. “I’m really excited about that. See what it is from the other side.”
While not nearly as well-known as 16-time Olympic medalist Michael Phelps or even former FGCU ace Chris Sale of the Chicago White Sox, Studd is proud of FGCU’s first Olympians and eager to see more in the future.
“It’s swimming. I’m realistic,“ said Studd, a former swimmer at FAU and the founding coach of a 5-year-old FGCU program that has dominated its competition in the Coastal Collegiate Swimming Association.
“Maybe they’re the most-famous athletes on campus every four years. They should certainly be very proud, and I think FGCU is. The word is out there.”
