Name changed in case identifying.
Today I was at my local pool, which is always very quiet around this time of year. There is always one lane up, the pool was empty apart from one man swimming very slow breastroke up the middle of the lane. I headed for the lane, he saw me and so I started swimming up one side to go in the usual clockwise direction that is standard in lanes. I do a reasonably quick, efficient front crawl. The third time of doing this, he sort of paused as I passed him on the other side (I could see him under the water) and then I felt a pressure on my left shoulder and he pushed me down under the water.
I had a couple of moments of panic where you can't breathe and then he must have removed his hand and I bobbed up. Then he started shouting at me, I don't even know what. I told him to leave me alone. The lifeguard did nothing. I resumed swimming and tried not to make a fuss. He seemed to disappear after that.
At one point in my swim, I stopped to get my pull bouy at the end of the lane and he must have been in the showers opposite because the same man walked to the front of the lane and started shouting at me again. Something to do with swimming that he seemed to take great objection to and he asked me what I thought I was doing. I called the lifeguard over and he was rather blase and claimed that we had swam into each other. We had not. I actually cried out in shock quite loudly when I surfaced and the lifeguard admitted hearing this. The man deliberately assaulted me by putting his hand on my shoulder and pushing me under, and there had been plenty of room to pass. I told the man, repeatedly to leave me alone and said that I was here to swim. I had to shout at him 5 times to leave me alone while the lifeguard did nothing. Eventually he moved away.
Once I'd finished swimming I spoke to the lifeguard and asked him what he had seen/heard. He again claimed that we had swam into each other and was prevaricative when I asked why he hadn't told the man to leave me alone and why he didn't seem to understand what that meant. I realised I was getting nowhere with him as he was probably sticking up for the other man and left.
I think what happened is that the man in the lane expected me to acknowledge him, chat to him a bit or something (I really feel uncomfortable talking to strangers in pools wearing just a swimsuit) and when I ignored him and just got on with swimming, he decided to do something to draw my attention to him, like a "she's not getting away with me ignoring me".
I'm absolutely fuming though. You feel so vulnerable when you're in a swimsuit in an almost empty pool and it was a proper assault. I mean I'm not injured, but it was horrible. I won't use that pool again, I've heard of other people having similar troubles there and I'll use a different one further away, but is there any point at all in reporting this to the police? The lifeguard is obviously going to be of little or no help and the man is only going to claim I swam into him or some other made up story.