Swimmer's Daily

  • Rio 2016 will be the 5th Olympic Games for Spyridon Gianniotis. The 10km distance is his most successful discipline and the Greeks hope for a medal for their athlete of the year 2012.

  • Six weeks before the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the laboratory that was set to handle drug testing at the Games has been suspended by the World Anti-Doping Agency in a new escalation of world sport’s doping crisis.

    WADA — the global regulator of doping in sports that oversees some three dozen testing labs around the world — confirmed the suspension Friday, citing a “nonconformity” with international standards.

    The Rio de Janeiro lab had a disciplinary record. It was suspended in 2013 — a year before Brazil hosted soccer’s World Cup — and was reinstated by WADA only last year.

    To win back its certification, the lab spent roughly 200 million Brazilian real, or about $60 million, to retrofit three floors of facilities at a federal university in Rio and train more than 90 technicians. That included a substantial commitment of government money in the face of a pronounced recession.

    Dilma Rousseff, who was removed as Brazil’s president this year amid a sweeping graft scandal, signed a measure in March to ensure the lab’s policies were changed in accordance with global standards such that its certification to run Olympic testing was not revoked.

    On Friday, however, WADA suggested that effort had not been enough.

    Read The New York Times and BBC

  • An Olympian has not only hit gold in the swimming pool. He’s also sitting on a gold mine provided to him by the world’s biggest social network.

    Michael Phelps, who holds the all-time record for Olympic gold medals with 18, has picked up a side gig as a media personality. Phelps hosts periodic live video chats with fans via his Facebook page after signing a deal with Mark Zuckerberg’s company, according to The Wall Street Journal.

    Phelps gets paid $200,000 and is one of nearly 140 video creators who have signed deals to create live videos for the social network’s newest feature, Facebook Live.

    See 12 News

  • It’s been nearly two years since 22-time Olympic medalist Michael Phelps finished a 45-day stint in rehab following his second DUI arrest.

    Now, with those dark days in his rearview mirror and his fifth and likely final Olympics right around the corner in Rio, the greatest swimmer of all time is opening up to ESPN The Magazine about his past struggles with alcohol and suicidal thoughts.

    Phelps cemented his place as an Olympic legend two years before checking into rehab in October 2014. He should have been on top of the world at the time, but instead he was drifting – drinking heavily and struggling to find his identity outside the pool.

    “I thought the world would just be better off without me,” he told ESPN The Magazine for its July 18 Body Issue. “I figured that was the best thing to do – just end my life.”

    Read People

    https://youtu.be/ZWo_IJedKEY

  • President Sergio Mattarella on Wednesday handed the Italian flag to Italy’s flag-bearers for the Rio Olympics and Paralympics, respectively swimmer Federica Pellegrini and sprinter Martina Caironi, at a ceremony at the presidential place featuring the two teams.

    Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) President Giovanni Malagò told Mattarella “the athletes will do their utmost to honour the Azzurri colours” and said they “represent our country’s pride”.

    Pellegrini said “I hope to realise even bigger dreams in Rio”.

    Read Ansa

    https://youtu.be/YUC6gERj36A

  • Our John Chapman was given a backstage tour of the Olympic Swim Trials.

  • A bid to clear the Pacific of its plastic debris has moved a step closer with the launch of the biggest prototype clean-up boom yet by the Dutch environment minister at a port in The Hague.

    On Thursday the 100m-long barrier will be towed 20km out to sea for a year of sensor-monitored tests, before being scaled up for real-life trials off the Japanese coast at the end of next year.

    If all goes well, full-scale deployment of a 100km-long version will take place in the “great Pacific garbage patch” between California and Hawaii in 2020. […]

    The snake-like ocean barrier is made out of vulcanised rubber and works by harnessing sea currents to passively funnel trash in surface waters – often just millimetres in diameter – into a V-shaped cone.

    A cable sub-system will anchor the structure at depths of up to 4.5km – almost twice as far down as has even been done before – keeping it in place so it can trap the rubbish for periodic collection by boats.

    A fully scaled-up barrier would be the most ambitious ocean cleansing project yet, capturing around half of the plastic soup that circles the Pacific gyre within a decade. That at least is the plan.

    The largely crowd-funded project has caught the imagination of a new generation in the Netherlands. In no small part this is down to the unaffected charisma of its 21-year-old founder Boyan Slat, a student dropout turned environmental entrepreneur.

    Read The Guardian

    https://youtu.be/6IjaZ2g-21E

  • The 4,400-seat IU Natatorium in Indianapolis had sold out long before the meets in 1996 and 2000, and the potential of the event needed to be studied hard by Executive Director Chuck Wielgus and USA Swimming.

    “We kind of knew it was time,” said Mike Unger, the event director in 2000 and now USA Swimming assistant executive director. “Chuck always talks about standing on the 10-meter tower on the last night and looking down and seeing that we were kind of busting at the seams. And that’s sort of happened.”

    What was off there in the distance, had officials been able to see it then, was a future that will hit its highest note in 2016 as the U.S. Olympic Trials exceed 200,000 in total attendance for the first time, and with all 15 sessions sold out at the CenturyLink Center.

    Read Omaha.com

  • After finishing an uncharacteristic fourth in the opening round of the 2016 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series in Texas two weeks earlier, defending champion Gary Hunt showed his rivals that he’s still the man to beat if they want to win this year’s title.