Hi, this is Dr. Mercola, helping you take control of your health, and today we had the opportunity to speak to an Olympic athlete,

our Kati Van Chagnan, and I probably murdered his pronunciation of his name, but he actually meddled a few times in the Olympics and he was representing the Russian swim team and he is now migrated to the United States

and speaks pretty darned fluid English. A lot better than I speak Russian.

And I took Russian in high school,

and I don't remember any of it.

I went to a high school with 5,000 guys and there you know and the testosterone was really

geared up and the only woman in the school was a Russian teacher and I went and signed up for that

class for two years and then she left before I got there.

But that was my own experience with the Russian.

So anyway, welcome and why don't you let us know what made you leave the Russian swim team and migrate to the United States?

Well, it was kind of a thing that I known for, I just couldn't like keep quiet about things that were that was going on in Russian swimming

team and with the old Russian swimming Federation and just basically kind of things accumulated over the years and at some point I just started to kind of step away because I couldn't take it any longer and what couldn't you take?

I'm sorry? What couldn't you take?

So I just it kind of ended in a way that the Russian Swimming Federation tried to keep me away from qualifying for world championships back in 2013.

They didn't take me to 2011 world championships on the kind of pretense false accusations and then in 2013 I went to Russian trials for World Championship, I qualified and then I knew what sort of kind of attitude they had towards me and I just announced that I'm not going to represent

Russian swimming team anymore and so instead of going to World Championship, I ended up going to U.S. Open that summer.

And my time was second in the world.

Oh, great.

Yeah, definitely world class and that was in the 100 to 200 meter backstroke and are you still

competing?

Because that was a number of years ago.

I was like, four years going. I was like four years ago.

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