Military Olympians

Colonel's daughter swims for the gold

Life as an Air Force brat can teach an open-water swimmer a lot: how to adapt to new situations, accept unpredictable changes—and get used to moving very long distances, which might help explain how Chloe Sutton, the daughter of Col. David Sutton, has gotten so good, so fast, at her chosen sport.

Since swimming her first open-water race two years ago, Sutton, 16, has won several national and international events and will compete in the Olympic debut of the open-water 10K on Wednesday in Beijing.

Before she settled in California to train with her current coach, Sutton did more than her share of PCS packing. Her father's assignments and school placements have kept her family moving at a pace that would tire Michael Phelps. Wendy Sutton ticks off the bases where they've been stationed, some of them twice: Ellsworth, Offutt, Maxwell, the Pentagon, Schriever, Beale and Vandenberg. David Sutton is now chief of staff at Los Angeles Air Force Base Space and Missile Systems Center, allowing the family to live together while Chloe gets world-class coaching.

"Being a military child," Sutton said, "has helped me learn flexibility"—and flexibility is one of the most important assets an open-water swimmer can have. Competitors battle for hours through changing currents, choppy water, sometimes less-than-friendly wildlife and jostling opponents. The neatly ruled, chlorinated back-and-forth of most swimming events begins to look like a kiddie pool by comparison.

"It could be wavy, rainy, or perfectly calm and sunny," Sutton said. "They could change the course five minutes before a race. ... You have to be able to deal with it."

Sometimes dealing with it means duct-taping your goggles and swimming cap to your head to prevent them from being ripped off by another swimmer's flailing arm, or tucking gel packs into your bathing suit in case the aid station drifts far off the course.

"I've seen people get knocked out, I've seen people get a black eye," Sutton said.

Wendy Sutton says that the pain of leaving schools and friends was complicated by the stress of finding a new coach for Chloe. But though the family moved constantly, Chloe's goal of swimming in the Olympics never did—and her swimming helped her deal with military life just as military life helped her adjust to swimming challenges.

The moving "wasn't that hard on her, because she was so determined and focused," Wendy Sutton said.

But even her mother wasn't aware how long Chloe had been dreaming of and working toward the Olympics until her daughter told her earlier this year, "Do you realize that since I was 6½ years old and I first heard about the Olympics ... every birthday candle ... every eyelash that fell out, every star [I] saw, every time the clock said 111, I wished that I would go to the Olympics?"