Category: History
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Alexander Dale Oen – “The heart breaker”
Touching article here on Aftenposten, in Norwegian but worth running through Google Translate. I’ll translate a few excerpts here, as well as I can: His eyes could seem heavy and sleepy. They possibly become that way by being opened at 5 AM every day and spending countless hours in the pool. But his head was…
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Bruce Hayes: Behind the Olympics
Bruce Hayes won America’s hearts at the 1984 Olympics by winning an unexpected gold medal as last man on the U.S. men’s 4×200 freestyle, but there’s more to his story.
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Team USA Road to London: Janet Evans
At the age of 40, 4-time Olympic medalist, Janet Evans makes a comeback for the 2012 London Olympic Games. With seven World records and 45 National titles, Evans is considered one of the greatest swimmers in U.S. history. Following only behind Tracy Caulkins and Michael Phelps. Team USA via the17thman.
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‘We have to move on. Alex would have flipped if we didn’t train’
Touching article here on Bergens Tidende, where coach Sondre Solberg and teammate Aleksander Dale Hetland from Alexander Dale Oen’s club Bærumsvømmerne describe the shock they are in now. Solberg the guilt of having left a few days before Alex died (‘What if I had been close to him when it happened, maybe in his room’)…
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Alexander Dale Oen’s teammates back in Norway and on TV
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…
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When the hero of your kids dies
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…
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RIP Alexander Dale Oen
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.
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Historical Olympic Swimming
Vintage swimming footage from the Japan 1933, Helsinki 1952, Melbourne 1956, Rome 1960 and Munich 1972 Olympics. WestCoastMedia have a DVDs from these Championships that you can purchase for $20 if you live in North America and $26 if you live overseas, see video description.
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Four-time Olympic gold medal winner Murray Rose dies after cancer fight
Scotland-born Australian swimming great and four-time Olympic gold medalist Murray Ruse died in Sydney on Sunday aged 73 after a battle with leukemia. He won three golds at the 1956 Melbourne Games, becoming a national hero at 17, and then a wold, silver and bronze four years later in Rome, double gold in the 400…
