Swimmers: What did you think of the movie Pride with Terrence Howard with Bernie Mac?

I’m from Mexico; I just saw the movie for the first time. That movie never made it over here, probably because it wasn’t a success in the USA; I had to download it from Ares.

I’m 27, I’m still a swimmer, I swim from 3K to 4K almost every day, but I’m no longer competing. I saw the movie with my dad, and we agreed on many of the same things. The movie wants the audience to see the “hardships” they overcame, but we don’t think they had any hardships.

These are my opinions from a Mexican perspective:

1.- Recreation Center: The movies shows us it must’ve been hard swimming in such an ugly pool. I think they had it pretty good. The city actually had a pool that anyone could go to, that’s very good! I swim in a very exclusive Olympic size pool. You can’t even buy a membership, you can only have access to the pool if you are a worker or a relative of a worker from PEMEX (the Mexican Oil Company.) I don’t care if the pool was ugly, I think it was pretty sweet for them to have a public pool in their city that anyone had access to. I wish they had a public pool here.

2.- The Bus: It was clear they attended all of their swim meet in the bus from the recreation center. I’m sure the swimmers didn’t pay for those trips otherwise it would’ve been mentioned in the movie. I missed a lot of miss meets because I couldn’t afford constantly paying for bus fare to go compete out of town. I went to several meets out of town, but not all of them. I think it was only one time when the entire team went to a meet out of town. There was always someone left out because it was a lot of money we were spending out of our own pocket to attend those meets. I think it was pretty sweet for them to have a bus, and not having to pay for the bus fares.

3.- Speedos: Unlike what Americans think, no store sells Speedos, they sell swim trunks. I never got to wear a Speedo. We gave money to a lady who was going on a short trip to the USA to buy them for us, and we specified the sizes that we needed. But she brought back all the Speedos in size 30. Another guy and I were a size 32, so I never got to wear a Speedo. On the movie, it’s also very clear that the Recreation Center paid for the Speedos. That’s sweet!

I liked the movie Pride because it was about swimming, but I just don’t think they had to go through any hardships.

What did you think about the movie?