Author: rokur

Today in Bergen, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg officially opened the impressive AdO arena svimming facility, named after Alexander Dale Oen. Solberg mentioned Alex in her opening speech: ‘A person is missing here today. Norway’s undisputed top swimmer who passed away far too early, barely 27 years old. A great athlete, arguably one of the greatest.’ Images courtesy of Sander Englund Smørdal / simma.nu/no

Jacob’s Well, Wimberley, Texas, see for instance Wikipedia and visitwimberley.com http://youtu.be/xxpMTK4dwzg

Australian marathon swimmer Chloe McCardel has successfully completed a world record 126km swim in the Bahamas. McCardel’s support team says the 42 hour effort between two islands is the longest open-water solo, continuous marathon swim in history. McCardel’s team say her effort surpasses a similar record set by Australian-British swimmer Penny Palfrey in 2011. Read for instance The Sydney Morning Herald http://youtu.be/NJAb7aC0OlE http://youtu.be/nqiLY4tV6Xs http://youtu.be/rg8Eycz9IiQ

With just over a month to go before the 12th FINA World Swimming Championships (25m), Qatar is already setting records as an unprecedented 1,300 swimmers have registered their interest in competing at Hamad Aquatic Centre. Also, more than 500 team officials have registered to participate in the event. As of yesterday, 174 countries will be represented at this year’s event, which will be held from December 3-7, 2014. Whilst athletes are still undergoing the formal approval process in order to confirm their place at swimming’s showpiece event, all signs point towards Qatar being set to attract more swimmers to a…

Sport England’s Active People Survey shows that participation in football continues to decrease from 4.97% to 4.33% of the population and that 94% of participants are male. In fact, if walking is excluded, swimming is the national sport for participation, and 64% of participants are female. Running and cycling, in which the sexual division of play is also much more equal, are not far behind. This is important because the “booming national sport” narrative appears to legitimise spending more money on football than any other sport. This means Sport England funding per participant is £38 for football, but only £8…

Swimmers’ dream is to have an easy to use device to keep tracks of their performance, such as laps, time count, frequency monitoring etc. With Xmetrics this dream comes to reality: fixed at your goggles, just on the back of your head, it provides a customizable real time audio feedback directly while swimming. See Indiegogo http://youtu.be/5MTo4woYHWQ http://youtu.be/ztTSLG1opFc

‘The Right’. The world’s most dangerous and unpredictable wave. Watch on as Monster Energy’s Ryan ‘Hippo’ Hipwood returns to conquer the wave that in 2012 nearly took his life. Courtesy of Monster Energy on YouTube http://youtu.be/_N_-vxfz4uw

The official Olympic film of the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games in it’s entirety is now here on the official Olympic YouTube channel. Swimming starts at 2:03:00

Swimming inside an iceberg looks amazing because the ice looks like glass and that’s crazy, and because it kind of resembles an underwater version of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Or at least, like a crystal palace. National Geographic shows us how a free diver explores the ice cold waters below. See Sploid http://youtu.be/s5fysX2IQaA

In The Swimmer, John Cheever’s celebrated 1964 short story [pdf], Neddy Merrill decides to swim home via a dozen or so of his neighbours’ pools. Of course, to link this chain of water, he has to run across lawns, through woods and down busy roads. Inspired by Neddy’s watery journey, two south Londoners, Will Watt and Jonathan Cowie, came up with the idea of The Swimmer, a relaxed half-marathon that takes in a number of London’s finest parks and open-air pools. Starting in Hampstead in north London, the route heads down through the centre, crosses the Thames and ends up…