Swimmer's Daily

  • We can become a like a superconductor to our experiences. Without resistance there is no pain and we start to live in the flow, enjoying everything that life brings our way.

  • Kiki Bosch is an adventurer, biohacker and freediver who dives in freezing cold water all over the world.

  • South Africa will send a team of eleven women swimmers to the 21st edition of the Commonwealth Games in Australia. One of the athletes will be eager to make an impression after missing out on qualifying for the Olympic Games in Rio. Tatjana Schoenmaker will feature in the 100 and 200 meters breaststroke and can’t wait to prove she belongs on the world stage. CGTN’s Sias du Plessis has more.

  • Wildlife tourism operators like to claim their operations make people care more about endangered species. Others contend this is just preaching to the converted, without changing hearts and minds. The debate is long-running, but until now it has been largely evidence free. An initial effort has provided some good news for the tour providers and those seeking ways to increase support for conservation.

    Read IFLScience

    Photo by NOAA Ocean Explorer

  • Brandon Hendrickson had already been submerged face down in the pool for more than four minutes, motionless under the dappled Grand Cayman sky, when the struggle phase began. That’s the term of art among free divers and competitive breath-holders for the point at which the human body, sensing an alarming rise in internal carbon-dioxide levels, tries to forcibly override the will. For most people, the respiratory muscles begin contracting within a minute or two, and these involuntary breathing movements, or I.B.M.s, trigger an immediate intake of air. But for élite free divers such as Hendrickson, who grew up spearfishing in Florida but now runs a tree-care service in landlocked Olathe, Kansas, the struggle phase is just the beginning. Some pros endure more than a hundred I.B.M.s before, finally, they yield.

    Read The New Yorker

  • Sport for bravehearts! Swimmers take a dip in bone-chilling waters as temperature drops to 30 degrees Celsius below zero in NE China’s winter swimming base. Could you handle it?

  • Clean athletes have lost all confidence in the anti-doping system and the organisations involved are “in danger of losing all credibility”, World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) vice-president Linda Helleland has claimed after she criticised the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) decision to uphold the appeals of 28 Russians today.

    In a highly-critical statement sent to insidethegames, Helleland revealed she planned to propose an “independent” investigation into the entire process, which culminated in the decision of the CAS.

    The Norwegian, a former Sports Minister who is now the Minister for Children and Equality, said the current situation is “chaotic” and “untenable” after the verdict was announced with just over a week until the Pyeongchang 2018 Opening Ceremony on February 9.

    The CAS upheld the appeals of 28 Russian athletes who contested the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decision to ban them from all future Olympic Games and disqualify their results from the 2014 Games in Sochi for their role in the doping scandal.

    A total of 11 athletes had their appeals against the Sochi 2014 disqualification dismissed but have had their life suspensions annulled.

    “Since the McLaren Report was published I have followed the different decisions, and consequences of the decisions, with deep concern,” Helleland, elected WADA vice-president in November 2016, told insidethegames.

    “The situation, which we now find ourselves, is very chaotic.

    “Clean athletes and sport fans around the world have lost confidence in the system.

    “The last couple of years people around the world have become frustrated.

    “The situation is untenable.”

    Read Inside the Games

  • America has been horrified by the extent of the abuse by gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, but within another group of athletes who have spent countless hours of training, some say they too have been sexually assaulted by their coaches.

    The sport is swimming. Scores of women say they’ve been victimized and that swimming officials didn’t do enough to protect them.

    Laura Weiss was a freshman at an Indianapolis high school when she says her swim coach, Chris Wheat, began sexually abusing her.

    “I had never even kissed a boy,” she told Inside Edition. “One afternoon after practice, he asked me to come to his office. He closed the door and that was the first time he molested me and I was 14.”

    Read Inside Edition

    https://youtu.be/gK88rGukDXI