Author: rokur

Swimming legend Grant Hackett has this morning confirmed that he and wife Candice Alley have separated, with him wishing her “every success”. “I can confirm media speculation this morning that Candice and I have separated,” Hackett said in a statement. “I want to be dignified in my approach to everything and ensure the children’s needs are paramount and put first. “I wish Candice every success. It is my hope that everybody can respect the process and be kind to all parties involved as it is a very difficult time.” It is believed that Hackett and his singer-songwriter wife separated…

The Norwegian national swimming team arrived at Gardermoen Airport in Oslo this morning, of course swarmed by local media. A sad Aleksander Hetland discloses that Dale Oen was doing fine on his last day, in no pain at all, “Now I haven’t got my training partner anymore. We had made great plans for the summer together. I must just take a day at a time”. Team physiotherapeut Christer Kjølholdt dismisses that Alexander was feeling unwell, says he thinks that the police report is wrong, and that Alexander was as he usually was. TV2 discloses that there will be a minute…

On today’s edition of The Morning Swim Show Marcus Titus talks about his campaign to have hand signals instituted at the U.S. Olympic Trials for deaf swimmers. Titus, who is legally deaf, talks about the necessity of having hand signals for deaf swimmers at the start of races, and how it could impact him in races where precious tenths of a second count.

21-year-old Jacqorie Stansell was trying to teach his stepson to swim Sunday at a public pool, but grew frustrated because the boy wasn’t learning quickly enough. So he started holding the boy’s head underwater repeatedly for as long as 15 seconds at a time, the boy almost drowning and paramedics called in to revive him when he stopped breathing. Read and watch video for instance on Los Angeles Times and KTLA.

Two-time Olympic gold medalist Jessicah Schipper survived an emergency surgery this weekend after being rush to the hospital Sunday night with “extreme abdominal pain”. Initially diagnosed with the need to remove her appendix, surgeons discovered that she had a ruptured cyst on her ovary, which they then repaired. Read The Herald Sun via SwimmingWorld Magazine.

A fond memory from the Budapest 2012 European Championships, Alexander Dale Oen and Pál Joensen having a chat by the warm-up pool. This was the first big meet after the supersuit were banned, and they both did really good, so we were all really happy.

Andreas Selliaas has written the most touching blog post here in Norwegian. I’ll allow myself to translate most of it here, as well as I can, but if you read this and like it then you should visit that post and tweet it or whatever to pay tribute to the author. Beautifully put, in a very sad way. Sleepless: On each side of me my children lie and cry quietly. They cannot sleep. They are very sad. They find it difficult to say what they are thinking. Many thoughts run through their minds. The only thing they know is that they…

Haven’t got much strength to write anything yet, so here’s a quick list out of Twitter. Just a quick list where I’ve favorited RIP tweets about Alex, favoriting felt wrong but it was the solution I could find. And the widget won’t let me list more than 20, so here is the rest.

Tough one to watch, good that SwimmingWorld Magazine put it out, though.

Norway’s Alexander Dale Oen and Iceland’s Jakob Jóhann Sveinsson on top of the Shanghai World Financial Center supertall skyscraper, on a day off at the Shanghai 2011 World Aquatics Championships. So sad today, my thoughts go out to his family, the Norwegian swimming community, especially those who endured those days in Shanghai, you guys over in Flagstaff, and to all his friends around the world.