Category: Fun

  • Keating and Sir Branson to swim the Irish sea for charity

    Cancer Research UK’s ‘The Swim’ is a celebrity-led relay challenge where a group of eight swimmers and celebrities will team up with two members of the public to take on the 56-mile stretch between Wales and Ireland, including Ronan Keating and Sir Richard Branson. The gruelling stretch is almost three times the length of the…

  • The Voice of Swimming

    5th video in the “Swimmers” web series: “The Voice of Swimming”: They often go unnoticed, though their voices are (literally) ringing in your ears. They are the puppet-masters, the dictators of the pace, tone, and excitement of swim meets. And while you casually watch each race, they scramble behind the microphone, calculating splits, learning pronunciations,…

  • Embarrassing moments in the pool

    Australian swim stars admitting to their most embarrassing swimming moments, including Grant Hackett revealing that he ended with a tumble turn at the end of his still 1500 meter short course world record 14:10.10 from the Australian Short Course Championships in Perth 2001. Via the17thman.

  • The death of a swimming pool

    When the Dagenham swimming pool in East London, England was to be demolished after 32 years in service, they chose a rather different end to its history. Relaunched as a BMX park, Nike 6.0 “The Pool” provides free access from May 16 to June 12, when the venue will be demolished. The pool was closed…

  • Baby seal hitching the wrong ride

    “Excuse me, but could you go any more slower?” :-)

  • Peirsol on Crippen, open water and retirement

    ESPN caught up with now retired Olympian Aaron Peirsol, at the 10K Crippen SafeSwim in Fort Lauderdale, honoring Fran Crippen by doing what he lived for – racing in the open water. Peirsol turns out to be an eager open water swimmer, still swimming 3-4 days a week while enjoying his retirement. Via espn.go.com.

  • The Big Splash has launched

    British Swimming announce today the launch of “the world’s largest celebration of swimming”, the Big Splash partnership between the BBC and British Swimming stretching 10 months, seeking to inspire the UK to get into the water. The first major event will be The Great Salford Swim on Sunday 15th May when thousands of swimmers including…

  • Berlin swimming pool hosts underwater opera

    “Aquaria Palaoa” is the brainchild of Claudia Herr, a champion swimmer in her youth before turning to singing. Playing the lead role, she dives into the Stadtbad Neukölln pool in her green evening dress, oxygen tanks strapped to her back, to sing underwater with the whale-like sounds she produces transmitted onto speakers situated around the…

  • This pool is an illusion

    This is not a real pool, but an art installation created by the Argentine sculptor Leandro Erlich. He constructed a full-size pool, complete with all its trappings, including a deck and a ladder, where a large, continuous piece of acrylic suspending water on top creates the illusion of a real swimming pool full of water.…