Author: rokur

So this photo is from when I was shooting some sponsor photos of Pál and the rest of us at the Budapest 2010 European Swimming Championships competition pool, between prelims and finals the penultimate day of the meet. European 100 meter breaststroke champion Alexander Dale Oen (NOR) was swimming more or less alone in the pool, taking it easy before the 50 meter breaststroke final that evening.

Scotland’s Robbie Renwick will be writing about his preparations for the London 2012 Olympics every forthnight in The Scottish Sun, here is the first chapter. MY alarm normally goes off at quarter to five each morning. Then it’s a quick bowl of Special K or Rice Krispies and off for the start of training half an hour later at Glasgow’s Gorbals Leisure Centre. I know it’s a crazy time to be up. But in swimming it’s all or nothing. Thankfully yesterday I had a rare break from the all too familiar sound of the buzzer going off though. As we…

Three Tree Point, Burien, Washington. January 1st, 2012. Air temperature: 53°F (11.7°C). Water temperature: Colder :-) Via b-townblog.com

Video captured in Dominica in 2010 with a RED 4K camera (the Lamborghini of video cameras), by Howard Hall. Those things are huge, even when they are small.

Leading sponsorship agency Octagon estimates according to the Independent, that some British athletes could pick up £2m (US$ 3.1 million) before Rio 2016, should they win gold at the London 2012 Olympics, and 22-year-old super-heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua maybe even up to £5m. Swimmer Adlington, who said after Bejing that all she wanted was to buy a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes, could follow in the footsteps of Imelda Marcos should she strike double gold again.

The Independent has this fun article today called “The long, short and tall of Britain’s Olympic hopefuls”, lining up interesting ‘records’ of British athletes training for the London 2012 Olympics, like 18-year-old featherweight weightlifting champion Hannah Powell being the shortest and lightest with her 4 ft 9 in (144 cm) height and 7 stone (44.4 kg) weight … so small that she had to convince a male date that she was member of the British weightlifting team by lifting him on her shoulders. Shanghai 2011 bronze medallist Ellen Gandy is mentioned: Furthest resident from Olympic Park Ellen Gandy lives 10,059 miles from the…

Interesting article by Michael Cowley here on The Age, on the comeback of Ian Thorpe. He believes that despite whatever ‘weak’ results Thorpe has produced by now since his comeback, he will make the Olympic team, “certainly as a member of the 4 x 200 freestyle relay team, possibly in the individual 200, and he could even swim in the 4 x 100 freestyle relay in London.” And then there is the really good bit, about how Australians have refound their interest in swimming: There is a buzz around swimming again, it has become a talking point once more as…

Alexandra Petri writes here on the Washington Post about an Ancient Mayan day-planner that she has unearthed, instructing her “to sacrifice a toothed hen or an Iowan who had never had his hand shaken by a political candidate. After some difficulty I located the hen.” Well, it mentions a lot of other predictions for 2012 than December 21, including one swimming-related: 14.) Michael Phelps wins no medals in the London Olympics, marking the first time that anyone was surprised and disappointed that a guy who had spent the past four years eating large quantities of food and smoking controlled substances…

This one I’ve used so often myself, that it is only fair to put it out for free (Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.0) use. French sprinter Frédérick Bousquet looking rather sceptically directly at the camera, at the Rijeka 2008 European Short Course Championships in Croatia.

Time to kick back and relax, next year will be Olympic !