Swimmer's Daily

  • How do you train for swimming in open water while dragging a tree? Get a POV look at Ross Edgley’s insane strength training workout as he helps get our poor cameraman in shape. If you’re into fitness videos, this is the one you need.

  • Footage of an interview with Team England swimmer (and Olympic gold-medallist) Adam Peaty ahead of the Commonwealth Games. Also includes cutaways.

    https://youtu.be/k0JkWLCmstY

  • How Meditation improves my life.

  • A no-cost, day-use permit could be required for people who want to take a dip in the increasingly popular Blue Hole swimming area in this western Ulster County town, the state Department of Environmental Conservation said Thursday.

    The system, if instituted, would mandate that visitors obtain a permit before using Blue Hole — part of the Rondout Creek in the Sundown Wild Forest area of the Catskill Park — on weekends and holidays from May 15 to Oct. 15 each year.

    Up to 40 permits would be issued per day, and each permit would allow entry by up to six people.

    Read Daily Freeman

  • The Potomac River is healthier than it’s been in decades, according to an annual state-of-the-river report that notes steady improvements across a range of environmental indicators, from water quality to wildlife growth to recreational uses.

    The river report card, issued Tuesday by the Potomac Conservancy, awarded the waterway its first B, a grade based on declining pollution levels, the return of bald eagles and other native species, and the expansion of protected forests up and down a watershed stretching across more than 14,000 square miles.

    It was the advocacy group’s highest rating in its 10 years of monitoring river conditions, up from a B-minus last year and a D in 2011. One biologist working with the group declared a new “golden age” of eagles, osprey and other waterfowl thriving within the tidal reach of the Chesapeake Bay, which includes the Potomac up to Washington.

    “The comeback from where the river was just 10 years ago has been tremendous,” Potomac Conservancy President Hedrick Belin said in an interview. He cited decades of recovery initiatives — including waste-treatment upgrades and agricultural-pollution controls — that may be nearing an ecological tipping point.

    Read The Washington Post

    Photo by anokarina

  • Denver native Amy Van Dyken’s life after an ATV crash that left her paralyzed from the waist down in 2014 will be documented in an HBO special that airs Tuesday night.

    Van Dyken is a former Cherry Creek High School and Colorado State swimmer who won six career Olympic gold medals before her retirement from the sport in 2010. About four years later, Van Dyken hit a curb while riding an ATV near her Arizona home, tumbled down an embankment and almost completely severed her spinal cord. But with the help of Greg Roskopf, an Englewood-based muscle function specialist, Van Dyken has worked to regain strength in ways that doctor’s initially believed was not possible.

    The HBO program Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel is calling the segment “Uncharted Waters” and it will air at 8:30 p.m. It features Van Dyken’s return to the pool where she discusses her changed relationship with swimming since the crash.

    See Denver Post

  • Scientists now have the dirt on the rubber ducky: Those cute yellow bath-time toys are — as some parents have long suspected — a haven for nasty bugs.

    Swiss and American researchers counted the microbes swimming inside the toys and say the murky liquid released when ducks were squeezed contained “potentially pathogenic bacteria” in four out of the five toys studied.

    The bacteria found included Legionella and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium that is “often implicated in hospital-acquired infections,” the authors said in a statement.

    The study by the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, ETH Zurich and the University of Illinois was published Tuesday in the journal Biofilms and Microbiomes. It’s billed as one of the first in-depth scientific examinations of its kind.

    Read NY Daily News

  • A customer who paid only a few bucks for an official 1912 Stockholm Olympics diploma hopes he can flip it for a decent profit in this clip from “Grand Theft Corey”.

    https://youtu.be/Tcbvtb1Q-AQ

  • When to retire is arguably the toughest decision a professional athlete has to make. But for Guy Barnea it couldn’t have been more obvious.

    He may be only 30 years old, but he has no doubt he is ready for the next chapter of his life.

    One of the faces of Israeli swimming over the past decade announced his retirement last week, bringing to an end an illustrious career.

    Barnea reached the Olympic semifinal in the 100-meter backstroke at Beijing 2008 and ended Israel’s 10-year drought without a medal at the European Championships when he claimed a bronze in the 50m back in Budapest in 2010. He took a bronze in the same event two years later and also won a silver medal in the 50m back at the short course continental championships in 2012.

    Barnea represented Israel at 11 World Championships between 2006 and 2017, more than any other blue-andwhite swimmer, reaching the final in the 50m back in 2011 and 2013. He finished in sixth place in Shanghai seven years ago and seventh in Barcelona two years later.

    Read Jerusalem Post