Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Danielle Kisser, Paralympic swim hopeful, builds backyard pool

Danielle Kisser

GUADALAJARA, MEXICO - NOVEMBER 14: Karina Domingo Bello (L) of Mexico receives a medal Silver, Reilly Boyt (C) of USA medal a Gold and Danielle Kisser (R) of Canada medal Brnze during competes in Women’s 100m Breaststroke SM6 Final during the 2011 Parapan American Games at Scotiabank Aquatics Center on November 14, 2011 in Guadalajara, Mexico. (Photo by Gerardo Zavala/LatinContent/GettyImages)

LatinContent via Getty Images

Canadian swimmer Danielle Kisser, like many these days, suddenly had plenty of free time.

“Since I’m not swimming, and I kind of need something to swim in, might as well build a swimming pool,” she said.

So Kisser, a Canadian national team member and Tokyo Paralympic hopeful, googled do-it-yourself swimming pool and got started at her Vancouver area home.

She documented the whole project on her YouTube channel.

It took her five days with the help of her father, brother, some pallets and plenty of iced coffee. The pool is one lane and just a few meters long, but Kisser can swim in place continuously in there with a belt system.

“I haven’t really swam for like a month, so my technique feels awful,” Kisser said. “So this will hopefully keep my fitness up. It’ll keep my feel for the water up because we don’t really know when this virus is going to go away, but we do know we’ve got goals to hit, dreams to achieve. Tokyo is in like 400 something days, so might as well start training now. We don’t have much time to waste.”

Kisser missed the 2012 and 2016 Paralympics and had “six years of setbacks” that hindered her swimming, according to the Delta (B.C.) Optimist, which profiled Kisser on Sunday.

OlympicTalk is on Apple News. Favorite us!

MORE: ‘Power of choice': Melissa Stockwell on a Paralympic dream deferred

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_WDuV0Dwjv/