This guy needs a swimming achievement in WoW named after him.
With 11.5 million players, it comes as no surprise that
World of Warcraft
has a player base that includes a variety of celebrities:
professional athletes, best-selling authors, and Oscar-winning visual
effects artists. But how many games, even including single player
titles, can include Olympic gold medalists in their player list?
After our last WoW Celebs article, Ten Ton Hammer was contacted by
Olympic swimmer
Matt Grevers who wanted to chat
about his own experiences in WoW. Although he was a bit difficult to
track down between his practices and photo shoots for
Tyr
Sports (the swimwear company he co-represents), we eventually
caught up with the lean swimmer. Matt's unbridled enthusiasm for both
swimming and online gaming is readily apparent, and we hope
you can take a moment to read about his online life story.
As always, please feel free to
email
me if you are a celebrity, run in a guild with a celebrity,
or simply have a unique life story to tell. Don't be shy!
Ten Ton Hammer: I hear
you're a big World of
Warcraft guy. That's pretty cool.
Matt Grevers:
Yeah, I guess so. I think it's pretty fun.
Ten Ton Hammer: For those
readers that may not be familiar with your accomplishments, could you
give us a brief rundown of your career?
Matt: I was
a sophomore in college when I won my first NCAA title in the 100m
backstroke beating Ryan Lochte who's pretty much second in the world to
Michael Phelps. Then I won again my junior year and my senior year I
won the 200m backstroke.
After college, I moved to Arizona and made the Olympic team. I earned a
silver in the 100m backstroke and qualified for the 400m freestyle
relay and the 400m medley relay. I swam in the preliminaries
for both races, and so I got a gold in both.
Ten Ton Hammer: Did you
get to see much of China while you were there? Did you stop in any of
the infamous gaming cafes? Maybe put in some hours on the Chinese WoW
client?
Matt: I
actually did get in some WoW while I was there. When I made the team, I
actually decided that I'd earned a laptop. I'll tell you what it is,
even though most gamers will yell at me.... I got a Mac. Shame on me, I
know.
Ten Ton Hammer: Hey man,
my laptop's a Mac too. They're practically indestructible.
Matt: I
know! On top of that, it runs the game just fine.
So I make the team and we go straight from the meet to Palo Alto for a
training camp there. That whole camp lasts about a month, and luckily I
brought the discs with me because I knew if I made the team that I'd
buy a computer. So I loaded WoW on for that month in Palo Alto, and I
pretty much played WoW every day that month.
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