The Swimmer Breaking Records and Barriers

Casey Martinez stands at the edge of the UW natatorium pool at 5:47 a.m., her goggles already fogging with the heat of her own breath. The water is exactly 82 degrees. The lanes are empty except for her and one other swimmer three lanes over. This is her domain—the chlorinated silence before the world wakes up, before the emails and the texts and the people who want something from her. She's been swimming competitively since she was seven. She's been out since she was sixteen. But it wasn't until three years ago, when she transferred to the University of Washington to train under Coach David Park, that she stopped trying to be two different people. "I used to think I had to choose," Martinez says, toweling off after a 6 a.m. set. "Like, I could be the swimmer or I could be the gay girl, but not both at the same time. That's what the sport told me, anyway." Swimming has a problem with visibility. Not the kind you'd think. Unlike basketball or soccer, where athletes can't hide their bodies or their personalities, swimming is a sport that's historically swallowed its queer athletes whole. They exist in plain sight—in Speedos and cap logos, on podiums holding medals—while remaining almost completely invisible in the broader conversation about professional athletics. It's a sport where you can be yourself and still be erased. Martinez was good enough to ignore that erasure. She placed in the top eight at Pac-12 championships as a junior at her previous school. She had scholarship offers. She had a future. What she didn't have was permission to be herself. "There's this unspoken rule," she explains, sitting in a coffee shop near the U-District. "Nobody says it out loud, but you understand it. You show up, you work hard, you don't make waves, and you definitely don't make it about your personal life. Swimming is supposed to be pure. It's supposed to be about the times and the technique and the grind. Anything else is a distraction." That logic infuriated her. When Martinez transferred to UW, she made a deliberate choice. She'd be the same athlete—same work ethic, same obsession with shaving hundredths of seconds off her times. But she'd also be visibly, unapologetically gay. She came out to her new team in her first week. She posted photos on Instagram with her girlfriend. She wore a pride flag pin on her warm-up jacket. She refused to be a secret. Coach Park, who has coached swimmers at the collegiate level for fifteen years, says that Martinez's arrival marked a shift in how his program talks about identity. "Casey forced us to have conversations we should have been having all along," Park says. "Not because she demanded it, but because her presence made it impossible to ignore. You can't pretend someone doesn't exist when they're swimming a 1:52 in the 200 free." Her times have only gotten faster. This season, Martinez broke the school record in the 200-yard freestyle and qualified for nationals in three events. She's also become something unexpected: a visible gay athlete in a sport that has spent decades making visibility impossible. While outlets like The Advocate and Queerty cover national stories about openly gay athletes breaking barriers in football and basketball, the real work is happening in smaller pools in smaller cities—including right here in Seattle, where Martinez is proving that you don't need a major media machine to change the culture of your sport. You just need to refuse to be quiet. "People ask me if it's harder to come out as an athlete," Martinez says. "And honestly? I don't know anymore. I came out as a swimmer, not as a gay girl who swims. Those are different things. One of them requires you to shrink. The other requires you to expand." The nationals competition is scheduled for mid-March in Indianapolis. Martinez will swim against swimmers from across the country, many of whom come from programs that still operate under the old rules—the unspoken ones, the ones that treat queerness as a liability rather than a fact of life. She's not naive about what that means. She knows there will be faster swimmers. She knows she might not medal. She knows that a good time in Indianapolis won't suddenly make swimming a welcoming sport for every queer athlete. But she's also aware that her presence matters in ways that don't show up on a scoreboard. "I think about the kids who are going to swim in this program after I graduate," she says. "They're going to look at me and think, 'Okay, so I can be myself here.' That's not nothing. That's everything, actually." On the morning of her last big practice before nationals, Martinez swims a set of eight 200s. Her splits are consistent, her stroke clean, her breathing controlled. She owns the water the same way she owns her identity—completely, without apology, without the need for anyone else's permission. When she finishes, she pulls herself out of the pool and walks toward the locker room. Her girlfriend, who's been watching from the stands, waves from the bleachers. Martinez waves back, dripping water across the deck, completely unbothered by the fact that everyone can see her smile.