Mobile County broke ground Friday on a new aquatic center that will bring the city’s first Olympic-sized competition swimming pool.

“Kids need to learn how to swim,” said Paige Madden, an Olympic silver and bronze medalist and native of Mobile. “Maybe there’s another Paige Madden within us, and we just need the resources to make that happen…I just hope [swimming] can touch at least one person in the same way it’s touched me.”