Swimmer's Daily

  • Missy Franklin was the golden girl of the 2012 London Olympics. Night after night, she stood in the spotlight, her broad swimmer’s shoulders draped in medals and her impossibly bright smile dazzling fans and sponsors.

    Four years later there was crushing disappointment. Franklin lost every one of her individual races in Rio de Janeiro. She’s spent much of the time since then battling depression.

    “I had based my identity completely into the sport of swimming,”  she said. “When the winning stopped it’s, ‘Oh my gosh, what else do I have to offer?’ Like, I am nothing if not swimming, if not successful.”

    Listen to NPR

  • Marine Corps Air Station’s Tsunami Swim Team coaches looked for kids from the community to see which ones had what they were looking for. We spoke with the head coach and a participant to find out what qualities swimmers need to be part of the team.

  • Kirsty Coventry speaks about what she is going to do in her first two weeks in office

  • In an amusing vignette from the crowdfunded Dempsey Rice documentary, The Animated Mind Of Oliver Sacks, legendary neurologist and prolific author Oliver Sacks relates an amusing story about the time he worked on his book while standing hip deep in lake while leaning against the dock in between swimming laps.

    Via Laughing Squid

  • The Playita Rosa is a natural pool set in the ocean. It’s part of the La Parguera Nature Reserve in Puerto Rico. The government built this dock and pool for tourists and locals alike to enjoy the beautiful turquoise waters.

  • Carina Bruwer, internationally renowned contemporary flute player and founding member of the multiple award-winning instrumental group Sterling EQ, will attempt to swim approximately 22km from Nice (France), past Monte Carlo (Monaco) to Ventimiglia (Italy), in support of Muzukidz, an organization through which children from the township in Cape Town, South Africa are given the opportunity to learn to play the violin.

    Donate on https://www.givengain.com/ap/swimforhope

  • Lewis Pugh took on a huge challenge by swimming the length of the Channel – around 330 miles (530km) – from Cornwall to Dover. The swim, which he completed within 50 days, is part of the worldwide Action for Oceans campaign, which calls on governments to fully protect at least 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030. This is his journey…

    https://youtu.be/QAjo4horbUU

  • Ranger road gears up for their freedom jump coming up on Saturday, we highlight the warrior swim, the non profit’s twice weekly veteran swim program.

  • Kirsty Coventry, a former Olympic champion swimmer and a current member of the IOC’s executive board, was appointed minister of sport in Zimbabwe on Friday.

    The 34-year-old Coventry was vice president of the Zimbabwe Olympic committee. She also chairs the IOC’s athletes’ commission.

    She was appointed to Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s cabinet as minister of youth, sports, art and recreation in a surprise move. Mnangagwa won elections in July after replacing longtime ruler Robert Mugabe last year when Mugabe stepped down.

    Coventry won gold medals in the 200-meter backstroke at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics and also has four silvers and a bronze, the most Olympic medals by an African athlete. She shares the record of most individual medals by a female swimmer at the Olympics with Krisztina Egerszegi of Hungary.

    Coventry retired after the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, her fifth Olympics, having won seven of Zimbabwe’s eight all-time medals. The other was gold by the women’s field hockey team at the boycotted 1980 Moscow Games.

    She faces challenges in her new role with the governing bodies of Zimbabwe’s two most high-profile sports, soccer and cricket, in financial ruin after years of mismanagement and alleged corruption by politically connected administrators under Mugabe.

    Read The Virginian-Pilot

    https://youtu.be/lOpS3LeoxFU