For sure, Geneva isn't exactly known its high-tech sport infrastructures or athletes but rather for the tax-free housing it provides to the latest. However, the city offers a good variety of venues easily accessible by bike, bus or car. Trouble is, most of the pools out there are either short-distance or only open in summer. And if you're an adept of 50-meter training like me, there isn't much choice when you live uptown and swim year-round, but to go to Le Centre Sportif des Vernets. Which is a bummer because, frankly, I never really liked the place.
That I consider Les Vernets to be a fugly piece of architecture isn't the reason. I also cannot complain about the fact it's a municipal swimming pool and therefore open to everyone. On the contrary. It's always refreshing to share the same space with elite swimmers, children, elderlies or people who believe they can go faster than you, simply because they are twice your height. The vicinity of others helps me stay awake, better myself and socialize.
Fostering a community life by counteracting segmenting or hierarchy between age, race, gender or physical capacity, is the number one purpose of municipal sport venues, after all. Unfortunately, municipal sport venues are a dying breed, as wrote American historian Jeff Wiltse in his excellent book and study, Contested Waters. And Les Vernets makes no exception. Despite local authorities' recent effort, the main indoor pool, the only 50-meter available, is still begging for in-depth renovation, extension, and yeah, the company of another pool. That seems unlikely to happen in a near future. Some blame it on the money politicians are refusing to give away. I'd say it's a problem deeper than that, which has to do with the evolution of society and its overall perception of public spaces.
As a result, I, we, all get to swim in a so-calledly Olympic-sized tub which cannot stand more than three out of eight lanes packed at a time, because it generates too much waves. And when I say waves, I mean seriously threatening waves, capable of making you drown and forcing you to stop halfway through. I know what you're about to say at this point. Why do I keep going to Les Vernets, knowing there are much better aquatic centers downtown? Answer would be, attachment. No lie, I literally grew up there as a swimmer. By experiencing my first baths as a toddler, by learning how to swim as kid, by taking my first class in a club as teenager. And that counts. Your first cup of T count and leave enduring memories, no matter how many of them you have to swallow in the present day. Fishes always return to their nests, don't they?
Les Vernets' main indoor pool, during Les Rencontres Genevoises in 2009 //© Hefty
