There was talk earlier this week about a rumored (and later confirmed) case of several NCAA swimmers coming down with some sort of severe illness shortly after arriving in Columbus, OH for the 2010 Men’s D1 NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships. Swimming World picked up the story, and then posted an update – including a press release from The Ohio State University Media Relations.
According to a tweet by Ricky Berens, the swim teams from Stanford, Arizona, and Texas were all on the same flight. On Monday, March 22nd, Ricky described the flight as “productive” and didn’t mention anything about an illness. Later, Berens tweeted that Arizona had stolen their dinner reservations – meaning they were eating at the same place.
36 hours later, 9 Arizona swimmers were hospitalized and several Texas and Stanford swimmers were also reportedly ill.
It’s easy to speculate that something must have been going around either at dinner or on the plane that could cause members of three NCAA swim teams to become so sick.
The latest news out of this story: an emergency coaches meeting was called for Wednesday night. According to CollegeSwimming.com, the meet has officially been postponed until Friday, March 26th at noon. The situation is so serious that the Center for Disease Control is not letting the infected swimmers into the McCorkle Aquatic Pavilion until Friday.
