Swimmer's Daily

  • Even as we reach a plateau of coronavirus cases, Missy Franklin says we still need to be responsible. Spread the word not the virus. Stay safe. Wash your hands. Use social distancing.

  • Disgraced Chinese swimmer Sun Yang has made a last-ditch attempt for eligibility at the Tokyo Olympics by lodging an appeal against his eight-year ban.

    The controversial 28-year-old has was hit with the suspension in February following a drug test in September 2018 when he was accused of ordering a member of his entourage to smash vials containing his blood with a hammer.

    The Australian reports that Sun’s appeal was lodged to the Swiss federal court on 29 April in response to the long punishment handed to him by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

    Sun has claimed the correct testing procedures were not followed and believed the drug tester was not fully accredited to take the blood.

    The world swimming body Fina had originally cleared Sun to compete after an internal investigation of the blood testing furore, but the World Anti-Doping Agency successfully appealed the decision at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

    Read The Guardian and Yahoo! Sports

    Photo by jdlasica

  • International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame inductee Stephen Redmond takes about his historic Oceans Seven achievement with International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame chairman Ned Denison on WOWSA Live

  • Are you ready for our “Top 3 Dives”? We asked Jack Laugher, Olympic and World Championships medallist in the individual and synchronized 3-metre springboard to tell us which 3 dives from the FINA World Championships he considers his top 3! Enjoy these spectacular dives!

  • Hamilton Aquatics Director of Swimming Ash Morris is an expert on the UAE swim scene. He came across to Dubai more than a decade ago on a two year contract and is now in his 11th year at Hamilton Aquatics.

  • There’s nothing worse for an athlete than knowing they’re losing ground to their competition, especially in these times. And as Neal Jones reports, that nightmare is coming true for one local swimmer.

  • Lewis Pugh, an ocean advocate who has swum in icy oceans and turbulent seas, knows about endurance and the elasticity of time. In a podcast late last year he spoke about the challenge of long-distance swims, and when I heard his words last week they resonated powerfully.

    ”The thing about long-distance swimming is how the goalposts can shift,” he said. ”You think you’re going to do a 10-hour swim and then you get to the coast of France and suddenly a current picks you up and it’s going to be a 15-hour swim. You think it’s going to be 15 hours and suddenly it’s 20 hours.

    ”It can break your mind. And so you have to be able to have that resilience when the goalposts shift. Because they will shift. And they never shift in the direction you want them to shift. To keep on going, to put one arm in front of the next and to recalibrate yourself.”

    In a way it’s what we have been doing for 100 days, watching lockdowns extend and recalibrating our lives. We flinch from the phrase ”flattening the curve” and live according to a curious calendar. We think not in months or seasons, but in circuit breakers. Spring is passing us by and we barely care because we’re busy excavating a grit we never knew we had.

    A hundred days is just a marker of how far we’ve come, a signpost, but it’s not a promise of anything. We don’t know if this is halfway to normality, or far away, because this virus doesn’t just sicken and kill, it teases and shifts our goalposts. Like Pugh in the water, we must endure.

    Read The Straits Times

    ocean swimmer photo
    Photo by Infomastern

  • When it comes to the COVID-19 coronavirus, the riskiest thing at swimming pools, hot tubs, and oceans is not the water itself. No, it’s the coughing, sneezing, panting, face-rubbing, and diarrhea-ing things that are in or next to the water: people. It’s also the things that people touch frequently such as guard rails, chairs, towels, and thongs.

    So, the key once again will be doing what you should be doing on land: practicing good social distancing, good hand hygiene, good disinfecting (of objects), and good avoid-touching-your-enormous face. And if you see any random objects such as a sign post, a statue, or a thong, don’t touch it if you don’t have to do so. You don’t know where it has been. Actually, in the case of a thong, you know exactly where it’s been.

    Read Forbes

    swimmer photo
    Photo by maHidoodi