By Lisa O’Donnell, Media General News Service

David Weathers helped put some of the sparkle in swimmer Michael Phelps’ trophy case.

Though 14 Olympic gold medals may dominate Phelps’ collection of hardware, he also owns several Golden Goggle awards, which Weathers made in the basement of his home in Winston-Salem.

The Golden Goggle Awards are presented each year at USA Swimming’s annual fundraising banquet. USA Swimming is the sport’s sanctioning body.

Weathers’ creations are given out in such categories as Performer of the Year, Breakout Performance of the Year and Coach of the Year. Phelps has seven of the awards and is likely to win more in light of his record-breaking performance in Beijing.

Chuck Wielgus, the executive director of USA Swimming, said that a Golden Goggle is the most prestigious award a swimmer can get in this country.

“For an athlete or coach to receive a Golden Goggle Award is akin to an actor or director receiving an Academy Award,” Wielgus wrote in an e-mail. “This is the ultimate recognition in our field.”

Weathers, 48, works a night shift as a tool-and-die maker at Tyco Electronics in Greensboro. For the past five years, he has spent many of his daytime hours cutting, shaping, welding and polishing the awards.

His father, Bailey Weathers Jr., a sculptor, came up with the distinctive design of a pair of goggles encircled by a ring. USA Swimming liked the design and in 2004, asked him to make 35 of the awards each year.

Bailey Weathers Jr. had become familiar with the sport while watching another of his sons swim. Bailey Weathers III, who grew up swimming with the Winston-Salem Swim Club, is a well-known coach in swimming circles. He has worked as a consultant for USA Swimming and is the executive head coach at Club Wolverine, the home club of Phelps and several other Olympic swimmers.

David Weathers and his father shared the workload on the initial order.
“He’s a sculptor, not a machinist,” David Weathers said. “We teamed up.”

He took over the contract when his father moved to Seattle.

Weathers uses chunks of silicon bronze to make the awards. Except for the lenses, which are made by a company in Colorado, Weathers shapes each piece using a lathe and other machines in his well-ordered basement in the Sherwood Forest neighborhood.
After the pieces are welded, Weathers hand polishes them in a process that can take up to 30 hours.

He guessed that each award takes 60 to 80 hours.

From his basement, they are sent to Raleigh, where they are goldplated.

The process is so time-consuming that he hires two workers to help fill the order.

“I enjoy doing it, but after sitting here all day Saturday polishing, I do question whether I enjoy it,” he said with a laugh. “But I do.” The finished award, which includes a marble base, weighs about 8 pounds and is 12 inches tall and 8 inches wide.

Weathers is about to finish his latest batch of Golden Goggles, which will fulfill his contract through 2010. After that, he said, USA Swimming will evaluate whether it wants to continue with the awards program.

He treats the awards delicately, picking up each one with a cloth to keep from leaving fingerprints. When he sees a photograph on the Internet of a swimmer handling the award in a nonchalant way, he said he feels a twinge of nervousness.

“They are pieces of art. They’re sculptures,” Weathers said. “They look the same, but no two pieces are alike.”

Weathers, who never swam competitively, said he enjoyed watching Phelps and the rest of the Olympic swim team compete.

“It’s kind of neat to see the same guys who were on the podium getting your goggle trophy,” he said.