Swimmer's Daily

  • An all-girl rock band has been dropped from performing at a New York event after remarks defending convicted Stanford University rapist Brock Turner came to light.

    Good English was disinvited from Brooklyn’s Northside Music Festival this weekend after drummer Leslie Rasmussen wrote a letter defending convicted rapist Brock Turner.

    She helped convince the judge to give Turner, her childhood friend, a measly six-month jail sentence.

    See Inside Edition

    https://youtu.be/UCvOhXTW2pM

    https://youtu.be/S3RkqofV4Lg

  • Fred Nelis is all heart, even though his heart didn’t originally belong to him.

    He’s a local transplant patient who is defying the odds, swimming his way to success.

    If the name Fred Nelis sounds familiar, it should. He gained national attention when he and a friend both received the gift of life from the same organ donor. Now, Fred is practicing hard for the Transplant Games of America to be held this weekend in Cleveland.

    See FOX 17

  • A local mom is making waves within the Arlington Dept. of Parks and Recreation’s aquatics program.

    The mother, who goes by “Lynn” but didn’t want her last name used, to protect her daughter’s privacy, says a male swim instructor is showing too much skin — specifically, his chest — in the pool. She wants the man to wear a shirt when teaching her daughter (and other children) how to swim.

    This morning, after a Parks and Rec staffer told her the department wouldn’t force the instructor to wear anything in the pool other than appropriate swim trunks, Lynn emailed numerous local reporters and news outlets with her complaint.

    The biggest problem, she explained, is skin-to-skin contact, which she finds intolerable.

    “I sit with my daughter every week watching her… and of course the instructors are touching and holding children the entire time!” she said in an email. (Lynn has had other complaints against the Parks and Rec department, but this is the most recent issue.)

    Arlington County Dept. of Parks and Recreation spokeswoman Susan Kalish told ARLnow.com that swim shirts are optional for instructors.
    “All of the aquatic instructors that are employed by Arlington County are required to wear proper swim attire,” Kalish said via email. “For men, they must wear swim trunks. We provide instructors with a rash-guard shirt (worn in water), which is optional. The Department of Parks and Recreation received a complaint regarding staff attire from a customer on Wednesday, June 8. Staff responded promptly and offered to cancel the class enrollment and provide a full refund.”

    Read ARL Now

    Photo by Arlington County

  • Brock Turner, the ex-Stanford swimmer convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, lied about his history of drinking and drug use when he portrayed himself in a statement to probation officials as an “inexperienced drinker and party goer,” prosecutors contended in a sentencing memo.

    Turner is serving a six-month jail sentence for three counts of sexual assault, but can be released in as soon as three months. He faced a maximum of 14 years in jail and Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky’s sentence has led to widespread outcry and a campaign to recall him.

    Turner has also come under fire for the statement, obtained by CBS News, in which he blames his behavior on alcohol and the “college lifestyle.” In the statement, he also implies he hadn’t had experience with partying and drinking prior to the sex assault.

    “Coming from a small town in Ohio, I had never really experienced celebrating or partying that involved alcohol,” he said in the statement.

    In the memo, however, prosecutors point to cell phone evidence they say proves otherwise. In a search of Turner’s cell phone, prosecutors say they found photos of Turner smoking a pipe and a Dec. 27, 2014 video of Turner smoking a bong and drinking out of a liquor bottle immediately after.

    See CBS News and read ABC News

  • A short film with Michael Phelps and Milorad Cavic looking back on the 2008 Olympic 100m butterfly final was published by Omega, the Olympic timekeeper, this week.

    Phelps memorably beat Cavic by .01 of a second, keeping his hopes alive of winning a record eight gold medals at a single Olympics.

    “My gut instinct is that I won,” Cavic said in the film. “It was the best and the worst thing that ever happened to me, losing that Olympic gold.”

    See NBC Sports

    https://youtu.be/FDp_hCLRCCw

  • She’s an avid swimmer, and survivor.

  • Brian Tomlinson lost his leg to cancer but always had dreams of joining the military or becoming a military police officer, and last night that dream came true thanks to the Athol Police Department.

  • The first batch of Adidas footwear to be produced using ocean plastic has been made available. The sportswear brand partnered with Parley for the Oceans to create the Adidas x Parley, which is made with plastics collected in coastal areas of the Maldives, as well as illegal deep-sea gill nets.

    The material produced is called Parley Ocean Plastic

    Read Gizmag and see Adidas

    https://youtu.be/eoAUYxIjD-8

    https://youtu.be/U7K8VIqmj-M

  • In a pre-sentencing letter to the judge released today by the New York Times,convicted rapist Brock Turner fails to own any responsibility for raping an unconscious woman behind a trash dumpster on Jan. 17, 2015. Turner’s plea letter reads like a laundry list of white male privilege lost. It touched the white male judge in all the right places. Turner begs for leniency in his letter, and he got it.

    “I’ve been shattered by the party culture and risk taking behavior that I briefly experienced in my four months at school,” writes the former Stanford University student. “I’ve lost my chance to swim in the Olympics.”

    Turner blames the sexual assault he committed on a campus culture of excessive alcohol consumption, peer pressure, and “sexual promiscuity.”

    There’s no way Brock Allan Turner–oh by the way, did you see his swimming times?–could have raped a woman because he’s a fucking rapist.

    In a letter to Judge Aaron Persky of the Santa Clara County Superior Court which was submitted before his ridiculously wrist-slap of a sentence, Turner says: “I am the sole proprietor of what happened on the night that changed these people’s lives forever. I would give anything to change what happened.”

    The New York Times published a copy of his letter today. In it, Turner also says that his decision to rape an unconscious woman behind a trash dumpster on the Stanford campus left him “a changed person.” I’ll bet! It changed the woman he raped, too.

    Read boingboing

    https://youtu.be/2zVRlW5nd18

    https://youtu.be/OaHi0n9Mhgo

    https://youtu.be/3d0MmrLmafI