Swimmer's Daily

  • If you live near the sea, make frequent trips to the beach, or are planning an island holiday this summer, chances are you’re getting more out of it than just enjoyment. It has long been thought sea frolicking has many health benefits.

    Historically, doctors would recommend their patients go to the seaside to improve various ills. They would actually issue prescriptions detailing exactly how long, how often and under what conditions their patients were to be in the water.

    Using seawater for medical purposes even has a name: thalassotherapy.

    In 1769, a popular British doctor Richard Russell published a dissertation arguing for using seawater in “diseases of the glands”, in which he included scurvy, jaundice, leprosy and glandular consumption, which was the name for glandular fever at the time. He advocated drinking seawater as well as swimming in it.

    Read NZ Herald

  • As his career as a member of the swim team at the University of Michigan came to a close, Adam Oxner began to realize how difficult it was to stay on top of his training with fresh workout ideas.

    A couple of years later, Oxner and fellow swimmer Fares Ksebati came up with a solution that helped swimmers of all ability levels achieve their fitness goals through the development of the MySwimPro app. The app has since garnered praise from Apple as the Apple Watch App of the Year while earning 100,000 users since launching in 2015.

    “Friends were asking us for help writing workouts and offered to compensate us for our time to help them reach their goals,” Oxner said. “That’s when we knew we had identified a problem worth solving.

    Read MLive

  • A senior serving Russian anti-doping official has denied admitting that the country operated an “institutional conspiracy” during the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.

    Anna Antseliovich, the acting director general of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), supposedly admitted the nature of an operation which is thought to have implicated dozens of home medal winners during an interview with the New York Times.

    Although she continued to maintain that the programme was not “state sponsored” because top Government officials such as Russian President Vladimir Putin were not involved, the comments were presented as marking a major departure from a previous stance in which they refused to directly acknowledge any wrongdoing at their home Games.

    But in a later statement RUSADA have now claimed that the comments were taken out of context and instead referred to Antsliovich describing the findings of the McLaren report.

    A full transcript has not yet been released.

    Read Inside the Games

    https://youtu.be/1Na5k1WBsmY

  • In August 2015, she and her younger sister Yusra took the same hazardous route to Lesvos themselves, as refugees fleeing the war in their native Syria.

    The women, who are trained elite swimmers, captivated audiences around the world, first for their rescue of their 18 fellow passengers after their flimsy boat’s engine failed, and again when 18-year-old Yusra made history when she competed in Rio this year as part of the first-ever Refugee Olympic Team.

    This autumn, 21-year-old Sarah returned to Lesvos as a volunteer lifeguard with Emergency Response Centre International (ERCI), a Greek, non-profit humanitarian organization that assists refugees in distress as they attempt to reach the island.

    Visit UNHCR

  • It was the first time a South American country ever hosted the Summer Olympics. But Brazil’s political, economic and health crises soon trumped the pre-event excitement. Yet the organizers hailed it as success but not everyone agrees. Months after the party – the money worries remain. CCTV America’s Lucrecia Franco reports.

  • Russia is for the first time conceding that its officials carried out one of the biggest conspiracies in sports history: a far-reaching doping operation that implicated scores of Russian athletes, tainting not just the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi but also the entire Olympic movement.

    Over several days of interviews here with The New York Times, the Russian officials said they no longer disputed a damning set of facts that detailed a doping program with few, if any, historical precedents.

    “It was an institutional conspiracy,” Anna Antseliovich, the acting director general of Russia’s national antidoping agency, said of years’ worth of cheating schemes.

    A lab director tampered with urine samples at the Olympics and provided cocktails of performance-enhancing drugs, corrupting some of the world’s most prestigious competitions. Members of the Federal Security Service, a successor to the K.G.B., broke into sample bottles holding urine. And a deputy sports minister for years ordered cover-ups of top athletes’ use of banned substances.

    Read The New York Times

  • When he was 5 years old, Cullen Jones nearly drowned. But that didn’t stop him from getting back in the water. Today, he’s a four-time Olympic medalist who has made it his job to help others learn to swim.

    See Great Big Story

  • Sure, many athletes have competed in multiple Olympic Games. Many have won multiple individual golds. But doing so 16 years apart? That’s an exclusive group. In fact, membership may consist solely of Anthony Ervin.

    Sixteen years after tying for the Olympic title in the 50 meter freestyle at the Sydney Games, Ervin returned to swimming’s grandest stage in 2016 and sprinted to the top of the podium once again – in the process becoming the oldest swimmer to ever win individual gold.

    To say the 35-year-old took the road less traveled to Rio is an understatement.

    Read USA Swimming

  • Every four years the planet’s biggest multi-sport event comes around to thrill the masses.

    The 2016 Olympic Games took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

    But just like previous editions the build-up to the Games was thick with controversy.

    In times of economic hardship in the region the Games’ multibillion-dollar price tag raised concerns and tempers amongst locals.

    And the threat of a mosquito-borne virus, high levels of pollution and crime rate and the usual delays in infrastructure and construction of venues also dominated the pre-Olympic headlines.

    See euronews