Swimmer's Daily

  • The information leaked by the group behind the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) hack raises lots of questions, as it revealed that some healthy athletes were allowed to use doping while the whole Russian Paralympic team was banned only on suspicion, Vladimir Putin has said. Russian President Vladimir Putin attended a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent states (CIS) in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

  • Four-time Olympic athletics champion Mo Farah and 14-time Grand Slam winning tennis player Rafael Nadal are among another 26 athletes whose leaked data has been revealed by hacking group Fancy Bears after a cyber-attack on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

    Farah, who successfully defended his 5,000 and 10,000 metres titles at last month’s Games in Rio de Janeiro, is one of eight reigning Olympic champions from Great Britain named on the latest list.

    Others include golfer Justin Rose and two of the most high-profile members of the British rowing team in Peter Reed and Helen Glover, winners of their respective third and second Olympic titles in Rio.

    Also named is gold and silver medal winning cyclist Callum Skinner and a trio of hockey players in Crista Cullen, Alex Danson and Samantha Quek.

    Hungarian swimmer Laszlo Cseh, a six-time Olympic medallist, is another high profile inclusion.

    Read Inside the Games

    https://youtu.be/bxgOlseGYyM

  • Scottish Swimming is the national governing body for swimming in Scotland, representing clubs, swim schools, aquatic disciplines, athletes, coaches and thousands of talented and committed volunteers across the entire swimmer pathway from development and participation through to performance. Our vision is to ensure that every single person in Scotland has access to quality swimming programmes, regardless of age or ability.

  • A homeless Florida man out on a morning swim became the victim of a vicious alligator attack Monday, police said.

    The 56-year-old man, only identified by his street name “Ron Jon,” was swimming nearby a pier in the Indian River outside Melbourne, Florida around 9 a.m. when a gator lunged at him, Florida Today reported.

    Ron Jon was left with several deep puncture wounds to his shoulders but was expected to survive, according to police.

    See NY Daily News

    https://youtu.be/S0lSYOcg_YI

  • There’s something special about ultra-swimming, it seems. In 2014, for example, Knechtle published a paper looking at 30 years of finishing times for the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim, a 28.5-mile loop around the perimeter of Manhattan. On average, the best women were 12 to 14 percent faster than the best men. Another study, published in 2015, looked at 87 years of finishing times for the 20.1-mile Catalina Channel Swim, and found that when “the swimming times of the annual fastest women and the annual fastest men competing between 1927 and 2014 were compared, women were 52.9 minutes faster than men,” Knechtle and his colleagues write.

    That’s notable in itself. But it’s not the whole story. Where it gets really interesting is at the amateur level, said Steven Munatones, considered one of the foremost experts on open-water swimming. A few years ago — purely to satisfy his own curiosity — Munatones analyzed the finishing times of men and women who participated in the biggest ultra-distance swims around the world. He did this for three years, keeping track of “12 or 13” races — he can’t remember exactly. He never intended to publish these results anywhere; again, this was for his own curiosity, as a coach and as an open-water swimming fan. Here’s what he found. “If you’re looking at the average times — the average woman is faster than the average man,” said Munatones, who is the founder of the World Open Water Swimming Association. “Which, frankly, I was surprised to see.”

    Read New York Magazine

  • With just a few hours left to until the 2016 Paralympics comes to a close, Korean Swimmer Cho Ki Sung… claims his third gold medal.

  • Humpback whales breach during 22 for 22 Pushup Challenge! Help bring awareness to veterans with PTSD. This is day 9 of 22 for a friend of mine, Mike Pelayo. Nothing like a big whale to shed light on an issue!

    Also, Humpback Whale Almost Hits Fishing Boat

  • Anti-Doping Denmark has received confirmation from WADA that Pernille Blume’s medical data has been leaked in connection with the hacking of WADA’s database.

    Anti Doping Denmark (ADD) and the Danish Swimming Federation has been informed by the world anti-doping Agency WADA, that Danish swimmer Pernille Blume’s medical data in WADA’s database ADAMS has been compromised by, according to WADA, a group of Russian hackers who gained access to the system.

    The news has been received with dismay in the Danish Swimming Federation, who look upon this case very seriously.

    – It is deeply shocking to hear that it has been possible for attackers to force access to such private information, as is the case here. It is a serious crime and I really hope that there will great efforts, partly to get hold of the people who are behind this and partly to ensure that in the future these databases will be, if possible, even harder to hack into, says the Danish Swimming Federation’s Director, Pia Holmen, who also wants to stress swimmer Pernille Blume’s innocence.

    (more…)

  • Calum often gets asked how cold the water is when he’s wild swimming. In this video he’s come up with this handy water temperature guide to describe what baltic really feels like.