Showing posts with label Asphalt Green. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Asphalt Green. Show all posts

Saturday, March 08, 2008

She's 13, lives in Brooklyn, wants to be compared with "Sippy" Woodhead and at 12-years old she qualified for the 2008 Olympic trials.

The New York Times has a profile on an extraordinary swimmer named Lia Neal.

Lia Neal: "...Neal stands out, anyway, because of her deft strokes and her dark skin. The youngest child of an African-American father and an Asian mother, she has been compared to another biracial prodigy who blossomed in a mostly white sport. The connection to Tiger Woods is perhaps inevitable, but Neal prefers being mentioned in the same breath as Cynthia ['Sippy'] Woodhead, a swimmer in the 1970s who, like Neal, qualified for the Olympic trials in the freestyle as a 12-year-old.

“I think I’ve heard of her,” Neal, her hair in braids and her eyes sparkling, said with a shy smile last week. She waded demurely into an interview at Asphalt Green, an Upper East Side athletic complex, before diving into a 10,000-yard workout. ..." [Link]

Here is a link to her team website: [Link]