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VIA BVBLACKSPIN.COM

Before he became a world-class swimmer and the second African American to win an Olympic gold medal in the sport, Cullen Jones almost died in the water.

Jones was 5 years old and with his family at a Pennsylvania water park, where they waited an hour in line just to fly down a giant slide in an inner tube. Jones’ father instructed him to hold on to the tube no matter what.

The tube hit the water, and Jones found himself upside down at the bottom of the pool. Jones didn’t know how to swim but he held onto the tube as his father had instructed him to do.

“I remember how it feels to get lightheaded and that terrible feeling that you are drowning,” Jones said in an interview with Aol, Black Voices.

Luckily, Jones’ father was able to pull him to safety. Not long after that, his mother enrolled him in swim classes. The rest is history, Olympic history.

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