How to be aquatic: Bryan Mineo’s journey from the lakes of Texas to the Pacific Ocean
Bryan Mineo off the Eplanade in Redondo Beach. Photo by Shaun Sexton It began in on a hot summer day in a backyard pool in Bedford, Texas. The kid wouldn’t get out of the water. His mother had come out to call him to dinner. He was hungry, but staying in the water was better. He liked to go upside down in a handstand or dive deep and swim along the floor almost effortlessly, the earthbound laws of gravity no longer applicable. He liked the way the sound flowed through water, the slow-motion thump of his own heartbeat, the long whoosh of his own breath, the way light speckled through the swaying blue of the pool water. Bryan Mineo was four years old and he’d just come to a realization. He wanted to be in the water, always. That day, his parents were forced to literally drag him out of the pool. But Mineo was from an aquatic people. His brother, Justin, who was four years older, would win a state championship and set Texas records in the breaststroke. Though Mineo swam competitively from the ages of 5 to 14, to him, it was never about speed. It was simply about being in the water. At 18 he fell in love with a girl triathlete. As young men do, he slightly inflated his qualifications…
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