Sunday, June 2, 2019

Review of "Golden Glow"

It isn't often that a book on a swimmer or Olympic swimming is available for review, so when I saw this one on Kaitlin Sandeno, who medaled in the 2000 and 2004 Games, I had to pick it up.  Here is my review of "Golden Glow"


Title/Author:
“Golden Glow: How Kaitlin Sandeno Achieved Gold in the Pool and in Life” by Dan D’Addona with Kaitlin Sandeno

Tags:
Swimming, Olympics, biography, women
 
Publish date:
July 2, 2019

Length:
160 pages

Rating: 
4 of 5 stars (very good)

Review:
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.

Book Format Read:
E-book (Kindle)

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