When Kris Humphries watches the Olympics, he's one of the few people who can realistically say, “Well, I can do that,” without it sounding completely unfounded and ridiculous.
When Humphries was a kid, he was one of the best swimmers in the United States. In fact, at 10 years old, he was setting multiple records for his age class.
As reported by KL Chouinard of the Atlanta Hawks, Humphries recorded the fastest time for his age class in six different events: 50-meter freestyle, 100-meter freestyle, 50-meter butterfly, 50-meter backstroke, 50-meter breaststroke, and 200-meter individual medley.
That last event (as well as all of them, really) is commonly connected with Michael Phelps, who has taken the Gold in it during each of the last four Olympics. Of course, Phelps has won gold medals in essentially every swimming event, compiling 23 to date, a world-record.
Phelps was known as a child-prodigy in his sport, so it might come as a surprise that Kris Humphries was actually in his same age group, along with Ryan Lochte. That's right, little Kris was topping a pair of future Olympians in a number of events that they'd later dominate on the world stage.
Here's the proof, courtesy of USA Swimming:
Eventually, like so many other other youngsters in the United States, Humphries fell in love with basketball. He has obviously excelled with that sport as well, but who knows how good he could have been if he'd stayed in the pool.
He spoke on his decision to switch with People Magazine a few years back:
“I was so good at a young age that I got a little burnt out,” Humphries says. “I also grew up in the Michael Jordan era … for me, I watched [basketball] and saw it as a challenge. It's hard to stay focused on something when you have a ton of success at a young age, so I picked up basketball a little later and rolled with that.”
Even with Kris' immense nature talent in the pool, it's hard to imagine Phelps not surpassing Humphries if he'd stuck with swimming. The development of a boy's body is still in its early stages at age 10, and Phelps' competitive drive is essentially unparalleled, except for the likes of other transcendent athletes like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.
Still, it's crazy to imagine what might've been for Humphries had he not fallen in love with hoops.
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