This Saturday evening the 8th of October at 17:30 GMT, we the Faroese will be the host of the 3rd annual dual meet between Faroe Islands and Iceland, featuring some of the best swimmers from both countries. It is a 2 hour televised event, quite impressive if I may say so myself, with red carpets and big banners and everything.
Our format is 8 women and 8 men from each country, competing in a selection of 12 individual events and 3 relays. 2 swimmers compete for each country in each event, and each swimmer has to swim between 1 and 3 individual events. First swimmer gets 4 points in the individual event, second swimmer 3, third 2 and fourth 1, and in the relays it is double score. Winner is the country with most points when everything is swum.
This year the events are:
- 100 IM women
- 400 freestyle men
- 200 breaststroke women
- 100 butterfly men
- 50 freestyle women
- 200 freestyle men
- 4×50 medley women
- 4×50 medley men
- 400 freestyle women
- 50 butterfly men
- 50 backstroke women
- 200 breaststroke men
- 50 butterfly women
- 50 backstroke men
- 8×50 freestyle women and men
There are no prelims, only two national flag marked starting blocks for each country to put their best candidates on. Guest gets lane no. 3 and 5, host has 4 and 2. Results can be predicted by looking up the best times of each invidiual swimmer, but with the best having to swim 3 events plus 2 events in 1½ hour or less, stamina provides a certain uncertainty. We won on home turf in 2009, 101 points to 79, and Iceland then year after in Reykjavík, 98 points to 80.
The Faroese national TV channel “Kringvarp Føroya” has been quite good at providing television coverage from Faroese national championships and other swimming events since the early 90-ies, which we try to utilize to the fullest during these dual meets. We’re talking red carpet and big flags and banners, sponsor walls and billboards, bright lights and loud music, and an entire temporary platform built for TV commentators, officials and technicians.
Profile this year are for instance our Pál Joensen ‘fresh’ out of Potsdam (that is, in extremely heavy training) and 3-time Olympian Jakob Jóhann Sveinsson from Iceland (2:13.84 in the 200 breaststroke in Shanghai 2011). Also our Nordic junior champion Birita Debes (1:01.46 in the 100 backstroke), and Ingibjörg Kristín Jónsdóttir who just recently set a new Icelandic short course record in the 50 backstroke, with a time of 28.45.
The TV broadcast can be seen on Kringvarp Føroya this Saturday evening from 18:30 to 20:30 Faroese time, which is 17:30 to 19:30 GMT/UTC. There will be a live video stream on kringvarp.fo (press on ‘Sjónvarp’ and then ‘Beinleiðis’ in that box in the upper right corner), and live timing on livetiming.se. SwimmingWorld Magazine has also shown interest in the event, and will hopefully have it hosted on SwimmingWorld.TV a few hours after the meet.
To make it as easy as possible for people to follow this event, me and Bartal will as usual try to present relevant links and information on www.svimjing.com/live and (now) www.swimmersdaily.com/live, alongside a chat box and some amateur videos from the warm-up and stuff. I’ll be commenting during the meet itself, but will try to keep an eye on the chat also, to answer questions there and maybe even in the live broadcast.
If you happen to be in Klaksvík on Saturday, then the admission is free :-)
Looking forward to it
Rókur
