It took Vasili Krapivin 50 seconds to swim 25 meters during an open tournament in Sochi, Russia, having had the category “100 years or older” added to the swimming championships program especially for him. Born in 1912, he worked in the coal mines from the age of 18, graduated from the Tomsk Polytechnical Institute in 1936, but was sent to labor camps for 20 years for anti-Soviet propaganda, unable to ever find out specifically what he was imprisoned for, with no trial and all. Mining gold an tine ore in Kolyma, Siberia, meeting his quota fully, he would receive the…
Author: rokur
rokur
Production engineer and certified swim coach. Full-time IT consultant, spare-time swimming aficionado. 2 sons, 2 daughters and a wife. President of the Faroe Islands Aquatics Federation. Likes to run :-)
Czech swimmer Michal Rubacek has been suspended two years for testing positive for the banned stimulant methylhexanamine at the Czech championshipos in December 2011, meaning he will miss the London Olympics after competing at the games in Athens and Beijing. He holds the Czech records in the 50 and 100 meter butterfly. Read more here on The Washington Post.
At the “Broadcasters’ Meeting” yesterday, it was revealed that the surroundings of the Debrecen 2012 European Swimming Championships pool will be covered with temporary grandstands for the athletes and media, as part of the struggle to have as many seats as possible for the fans. László Szakadáti, director of LEN said: “The pool is not very big but it is going to be made big by the event. On behalf of LEN we must be grateful to the Hungarian for electing the adventure – sticking with their traditions – and accepted the organization of this event three months prior to…
A smart looking Frédérick Bousquet on deck at the FINA 2009 World Aquatics Championships in Rome, Italy. Jeez, I can’t get over that he missed out on the London 2012 Olympics.
The Canadian Olympic & Paralympic Swimming Trials started today, and will be streamed live here on swimcanweb.tv until Sunday, April 1, prelims from 10 AM and finals from 7 PM local time in Montreal (that’s 14:00 and 23:00 UTC), with video on demand available also. Visit www.swimtrials.ca for all kinds of details, including schedule, live results and browsable start lists and results. I’m looking forward to Cochrane’s 1500 on Sunday.
Zach Wilson, an adventure sports enthusiast and film-maker was paddle-boarding off North Carolina’s Outer Banks in May of last year with a friend, when his GoPro digital camera went missing. Ten months later, on February 28, he got an unexpected surprise when the friend he was with at the time spotted what he thought was an image of Wilson, posted here on REAL Watersports facebook page. And yes, it was his, having travelled 24 kilometres from where he had lost it, complete with 1200 pictures of crabs and stuff on the memory card because of it being set to take…
In a remarkable performance on 3rd night of the State New Zealand Swim Championships, Matthew Stanley, Steven Kent, Dylan Dunlop-Barrett and Andrew McMillan smashed the New Zealand record and gave themselves an outstanding chance to earn an invitation to the London Olympics. The quartet, the fastest four individuals in the 200m freestyle final, went 7:14.05 in the 4x200m freestyle relay which was seven seconds under the old national record, but more importantly posting a time that would have placed them 10th in the world last year. Twelve teams have already qualified for the Olympics, with the next four fastest nations…
Shooting footage for a 3-D movie and a National Geographic special, filmmaker James Cameron journeyed to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, seven miles below the surface. Tom Clarke of Independent Television News reports on Cameron’s deep dive to the Mariana Trench’s Challenge Deep, 300 miles southwest of Guam. “He set off in the middle of the night, but it makes no difference when you’re heading to the darkest place on Earth.”
Sweet, Mie Ø. Nielsen mentioned as a serious London 2012 medal contender, and Pál getting a nice, detailed mention also.
“We’re really satisfied. We have the potential for 8 to 10 medals,” French swimming federation president Francis Luyce told reporters on Sunday. France’s biggest hopes are Camille Lacourt, the 100 backstroke world champion in Shanghai last year, and Camille Muffat, who broke 200 and 400 freestyle French records to qualify, national technical director Christian Donze said, also tipping Yannick Agnel who set a national record in the 200 freestyle with 1:44.42. Read more here on Reuters.