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Golden Glow: How Kaitlin Sandeno Achieved Gold in the Pool and in Life
Kaitlin Sandeno is a world champion swimmer, Olympic gold medalist, and former world record holder. Now she uses her platform to help others, as the national spokesperson for the Jessie Rees Foundation, a coach for local youth teams, and general manager of the DC Trident.
Kaitlin Sandeno was one of the world’s greatest and most versatile swimmers. Competing at the 2000 and 2004 Olympics, she was a part of the world record breaking 4x200-meter relay team and is one of an elite few to medal in three different strokes.
Golden Glow: How Kaitlin Sandeno Achieved Gold in the Pool and in Life recounts Sandeno’s amazing swimming career—including her spectacular Olympic performances—and details the impact she has made in the world outside the pool. Breaking into the Olympics at seventeen years old, she became the face of the team with her enthusiasm and bubbly personality. She returned to the Olympics four years later to have one of the most dominating meets by an American woman in history. But Sandeno’s legacy in the pool is nothing compared to how she has used her platform to help those around her. She is the national spokesperson for the Jessie Rees Foundation and spreads joy around the country to children fighting cancer. She has emceed Olympic trials, hosted multiple shows for USA Swimming, and has given back to her sport, as a coach of youth teams and now as general manager of the International Swimming League's DC Trident.
Golden Glow is not only the story of how hard work and perseverance led Sandeno to Olympic gold but also how she has used her success in the pool to inspire those around her.
Kaitlin Sandeno was one of the world’s greatest and most versatile swimmers. Competing at the 2000 and 2004 Olympics, she was a part of the world record breaking 4x200-meter relay team and is one of an elite few to medal in three different strokes.
Golden Glow: How Kaitlin Sandeno Achieved Gold in the Pool and in Life recounts Sandeno’s amazing swimming career—including her spectacular Olympic performances—and details the impact she has made in the world outside the pool. Breaking into the Olympics at seventeen years old, she became the face of the team with her enthusiasm and bubbly personality. She returned to the Olympics four years later to have one of the most dominating meets by an American woman in history. But Sandeno’s legacy in the pool is nothing compared to how she has used her platform to help those around her. She is the national spokesperson for the Jessie Rees Foundation and spreads joy around the country to children fighting cancer. She has emceed Olympic trials, hosted multiple shows for USA Swimming, and has given back to her sport, as a coach of youth teams and now as general manager of the International Swimming League's DC Trident.
Golden Glow is not only the story of how hard work and perseverance led Sandeno to Olympic gold but also how she has used her success in the pool to inspire those around her.
160 pages, Hardcover
Published July 2, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 31, 2019
Kaitlin Sandeno proved to be one of the most versatile female swimmers in recent Olympic history by being part of a world-record setting relay team for the United States and medaling in three other strokes in the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics – the first one coming when she was just 17 years old. Now she is the national spokeswoman for the Jessie Rees Foundation addressing childhood cancer, and has also been a youth swimming coach. Her swimming career and life outside the pool is captured in this short but very good book by Dan D’Addona, a noted writer on the sport.
The most notable aspect of this book that I found interesting was the format – instead of following the chronological order most biographies or memoirs do, the book started with one of Kaitlin’s visits to a children’s hospital, her work with the Jessie Rees Foundation and, in one of the most touching moments in the book, how she met Jessie and the inspiration she gave Sandeno. This was a good way to introduce the reader to Kaitlin to describe what a positive and upbeat person that she is.
While Sandeno’s work for the foundation is inspiring, so is the story of her career. The youngest of three sisters, Kaitlin seemed to be born to live in a pool as she became a swimming prodigy very quickly. When she qualified for the 2000 Olympics as a high school swimmer, that was when she started gaining world-wide attention and by medaling, she didn’t disappoint. Her swimming continued at USC, where she won her events in the 2003 NCAA tourney, then capped it off with medals in the 2004 Olympics, including being the anchor on the world-record performance by the United States team in the 4x200 freestyle relay. Any swimming fan, casual or serious, will enjoy reading about the rise of the friendly, outgoing Sandeno.
The writing overall is quite good – the only problem was an editing matter, in that quotation marks were either missing or put in the incorrect place, making it hard to determine who was providing the quote. This will most likely be corrected in the final version. There are other passages that seem to be incomplete. One example – when Sandeno was struggling with her swimming at USC because she was living a very active social life, it was noted that later she curbed that by having a “long distance relationship” but there is no explanation of how that helped. These are far and few, however, and the reader will get to learn how happy and outgoing a person Kaitlin is, in both her marriage and her life after her swimming career. Any reader who is a swimming fan is encouraged to pick up this book.
I wish to thank Rowman and Littlefield for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...
The most notable aspect of this book that I found interesting was the format – instead of following the chronological order most biographies or memoirs do, the book started with one of Kaitlin’s visits to a children’s hospital, her work with the Jessie Rees Foundation and, in one of the most touching moments in the book, how she met Jessie and the inspiration she gave Sandeno. This was a good way to introduce the reader to Kaitlin to describe what a positive and upbeat person that she is.
While Sandeno’s work for the foundation is inspiring, so is the story of her career. The youngest of three sisters, Kaitlin seemed to be born to live in a pool as she became a swimming prodigy very quickly. When she qualified for the 2000 Olympics as a high school swimmer, that was when she started gaining world-wide attention and by medaling, she didn’t disappoint. Her swimming continued at USC, where she won her events in the 2003 NCAA tourney, then capped it off with medals in the 2004 Olympics, including being the anchor on the world-record performance by the United States team in the 4x200 freestyle relay. Any swimming fan, casual or serious, will enjoy reading about the rise of the friendly, outgoing Sandeno.
The writing overall is quite good – the only problem was an editing matter, in that quotation marks were either missing or put in the incorrect place, making it hard to determine who was providing the quote. This will most likely be corrected in the final version. There are other passages that seem to be incomplete. One example – when Sandeno was struggling with her swimming at USC because she was living a very active social life, it was noted that later she curbed that by having a “long distance relationship” but there is no explanation of how that helped. These are far and few, however, and the reader will get to learn how happy and outgoing a person Kaitlin is, in both her marriage and her life after her swimming career. Any reader who is a swimming fan is encouraged to pick up this book.
I wish to thank Rowman and Littlefield for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...
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March 3, 2022I loved this book so much! Kaitlin Sandeno is such a great role model. She did an amazing job using her great platform from achieving so much in the pool. She helped spread awareness about asthma and helped spread the mission that Jessie Reese was trying to achieve by spreading Joy Jars. While she may have never actually won a gold medal (A SILVER IS STILL SUCH AN ACCOMPLISHMENT) she found a way to make her silver lining and turn it to gold. That is what this book is all about. Even though she struggled in her college years with a back injury and being out for so long, she did an amazing job to overcome this!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews