Enlarge / A swimmer in the men's 200 meter breaststroke finals during a national championship competition on August 6, 2011, in Palo Alto, California. (credit: Getty | Brian Bahr) Several college swim teams learned a stomach-churning lesson the hard way during a recent series of meets: regardless of skill or speed, the real winner of the meet will always be the gastrointestinal pathogen that enters the pool. In an outbreak investigation that is destined to become a nauseating cautionary tale, health officials traced the spread of the water-based intestinal parasite Cryptosporidium (aka crypto) through several pools of competitive swimmers with the squirts.