Olympic Journal: When in France, Eat Well, Swim Hard

BTN.com staff, July 18, 2012

The latest update to our Big Ten Olympic Journal is in and it comes from Michigan swimmer and U.S. Olympian Connor Jaeger, who describes the team's training regimen and one dinner outing during their training stop in France. As one of four Big Ten names on the U.S. swimming team sending back journals, Jaeger follows up on some amusing team introductions from Peter Vanderkaay as well as a funny note from Davis Tarwater.

All of our journals live in our Big Ten Olympic Section, where you can also find useful links leading up to the July 27 opening of the 2012 Olympics in London. And we're also posting readers' best wishes for any and all Big Ten Olympians on this page here. Now read Jaeger's post filed on Wednesday morning.

"This is Connor Jaeger from the University of Michigan class of 2014 blogging from a hotel room in Vichy, France. I appreciate Davis Tarwater giving me the nickname "The Future" in his most recent post but I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline this one. It's already been awarded to Jimmy "The Future" Feigen by Scott Weltz and myself. And there can't be two "Futures" or I'm pretty sure we'd bend time. So I'm taking nominations for new ones.

Current Michigan swimmer Connor Jaeger is on the U.S. Olympic swim team. He chronicles his journey here for BTN.com. Read all of our Olympic journals.

"The travel from Tennessee to Europe was pretty brutal, but I couldn't be happier now that we are in France. Our hotel is on this narrow street in the middle of Vichy surrounded by buildings demonstrating old French architecture. It's awesome to be in a place with so much history.

"Yesterday we walked past a building that used to be an old bathhouse. The mineral water in Vichy's thermal springs is known to have healing properties. All of the signs and reading material around the bathhouse were in French but thanks to Davis and his translation skills, this is what we think the signs said: Napoleon came to Vichy, he saw the thermal springs, and he cannon-balled right in, thus declaring the bathhouse as his own.

"The facility where we train has probably my favorite pool that I've ever used. Along the walls and the bottom of the pool is this metallic reflective material that looks really cool with the sun shining on it during the day. The pool is located just on the outskirts of Vichy on top of a hill and you have a great view of a more rural area with more old houses and a race horse training facility. Yesterday I got out of our morning workout and looked on with Jon Urbanchek at the horses racing each other as they began their own workout. Jon said we were work horses watching race horses.

"Even though Jon is a living legend of the Michigan swim program I have never really spent time with him and have never been coached by him before this trip. I have to say that being able to hang out with Jon like this has really made this a special experience. The man is 100 percent class and gets nothing but people's respect and admiration. I'm happy I was able to make a team with Jon as a coach before he retires.

"Last night I got dinner with Tyler Clary, Peter Vanderkaay (PVK), and Davis. We went to a place called L'escargot de Lete. I'm pretty sure it means "the snails of summer." So naturally I ordered l'escargot as my appetizer. Out came a hot plate of 12 big shelled snails covered in butter. Yum-may! Dinner took about 2.5 hours longer than we were anticipating, but we were in good company so we didn't mind the wait.

"In the gallery below I've plopped some photos from France. The pool, our hotels garden where we eat lunch, and the view from the top of our hotel."

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Jaeger is a 2012 All-American and Big Ten champion. He and others chronicle their Olympic journey here for BTN.com. Read all of our Olympic journals.