After nearly drowning at 5, Cullen Jones became an Olympian dedicated to water safety

Before Cullen Jones became a four-time Olympic medalist and the first African-American swimmer to be a world-record holder as part of the unforgettable 2008 4x100-meter freestyle relay, he nearly died in the water at a Pennsylvania amusement park.

Then 5 years old, he went down a water slide behind his parents and clung to his inner tube until he couldn’t hold on any more when it flipped over and trapped him beneath.

He didn’t learn many of the details until years later. But some of that terrifying episode attached itself to him ever since.

“I can still vividly remember that feeling of not knowing what to do,” he said in a phone interview. “And, like, the lights going out.”

After he lost consciousness, he was forever fortunate to be resuscitated by alert lifeguards.

The chilling story is one that Jones has told often and even eagerly over the years.

Not so much because it compelled his parents to promptly sign him up for swimming lessons that led to his groundbreaking career and a life in the sport.

Because of the more vital aspect of it: the ability and conviction to advocate for water safety.

It’s a profoundly passionate cause for Jones, who sees it as no less than a calling to use his platform this way at every turn. That includes as an ambassador and board member of the USA Swimming Foundation and in his partnership with the Goldfish Swim School.

Which is why he’ll be at its Overland Park facility Wednesday and Thursday to promote the Goldfish Gives Back program to provide free swim lessons as part of Water Safety Month. The goal also is securing commitments to the Safer Swimmer Pledge, which can be found at: goldfishswimschool.com/safer-swimmer-pledge/.

“This is exactly up my alley,” said Jones, who considers each child taught to swim a chance to break “generational gaps” because it nearly always leads to passing on the education.

The message and effort are particularly significant as Memorial Day and summer loom. Drowning is an “epidemic,” as Jones put it, and data bears that out.

It’s the third-leading cause of “unintentional injury death worldwide,” according to the World Health Organization. In the United States, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4,000 people a year die from drowning, which is the leading cause of death of children ages 1-4.

Another heartbreaking reality Jones seeks to combat is what stems from generations of institutional racism, segregation and exclusion.

All of which rippled into stereotypes and even the cultural resistance and teasing Jones said he faced as a swimmer growing up in New Jersey.

It was “not cool” in the community, Jones remembered, until he swam for North Carolina State and became an Olympic medalist and those who scoffed before took notice.

That gave him credibility with a crucial audience.

“I wanted other people of color to know that this is something that you can do: Dare to be different,” said Jones, who is senior manager of sports marketing and philanthropy at Speedo. “I never take away football, basketball, track. These are sports that I love to watch. I participated in them.

“But swimming is something that changed my life and I want other people that might have grown up the way that I grew up to understand that.”

The history and its fallout helps explain why 64% of Black children can’t swim compared to 40% of white children, according to the USA Swimming Foundation.

Piercing outcomes follow, per the CDC: “Drowning death rates for Black people are 1.5 times higher than the rates for white people. Disparities are highest among Black children ages 5-9 (rates 2.6 times higher) and ages 10-14 (rates 3.6 times higher).”

Forty years ago this summer, Chiefs running back Joe Delaney, alas, became part of a shattering example of that when he ran into a pond in Monroe, Louisiana, trying to save three drowning children despite the fact Delaney could not swim.

Jones, 39, was not yet born then but was moved to learn of Delaney — in whose honor last fall GEHA, the Hunt Family Foundation and the YMCA of Greater Kansas City announced the “Joe Delaney Learn To Swim Program, Presented by GEHA Health.”

Delaney was “the true definition of a hero, and it breaks my heart,” Jones said, later adding: “It just speaks to the importance of why we have to get our kids to learn to swim.”

Because the three children Delaney went in to try and save that day, one of whom survived, were like most others in Jones’ experience: They are drawn to water.

Every time he speaks with a group of children, he asks for a show of hands for how many like to be in the water. Most go up.

Then comes the next question: How many of you have had formal lessons?

“Then the hands start dropping,” he said.

The more hands that drop, the more his conviction intensifies.

Because kids are drawn to water. And the difference between wanting to be near it and being alert to its risks and being able to swim are everything.

Jones already has a remarkable place in swimming history.

That includes setting the U.S. record in the 50-meter freestyle at the 2008 U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials and being part of ongoing history itself in Beijing:

He was Leg 3 on the 2008 relay that still stands as the world record and also is well-remembered for Jason Lezak’s impossible anchor leg and as one of Michael Phelps’ eight gold medals in that Olympics.

But his work in this realm could well be his truest legacy — for reasons he knows all too well.