Swimmer's Daily

  • When you associate “open water” and “Brazil”, the inevitable result is Ana Marcela Cunha. With six medals (two of each colour) at the FINA World Championships since 2011, the Brazilian champion is also a shining star in the annual circuit of the FINA 10km Marathon Swimming World Cup.

  • A group of UK adventurers have made history as the first Brits believed to have freedived in Antarctica. Will Glendinning, 40, made the treacherous journey to the planet’s most southerly continent with friend Dave Crump and four other crew members. Freediving involves going underwater without breathing equipment and relies on the diver’s ability to hold their breath for minutes at a time. Classed as an extreme sport, it is especially dangerous in the Southern Ocean, with icebergs “the size of small countries” threatening to collapse and crush divers beneath their weight. As a result, only around 10 people are known to have gone freediving in Antarctica.

  • A high school swim club is in hot water after school officials say the girls hired a male stripper to perform at their swimming banquet last week.

    The students were gathered at an off-campus facility in Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday when the dancer dropped in, making a splash, a district official confirmed.

    “It turned out it was the older sister of a freshman who hired the stripper,” Phil Roeder, director of communications for Des Moines public schools, told The Huffington Post Wednesday.

    He said the idea came from a similar stunt that was pulled off by the club about seven or eight years ago. Because it wasn’t until later on that that event was discovered, the Roosevelt High School students had escaped discipline.

    Roeder said the freshman student’s older sister, who he described as a graduate in her early 20s, suggested that the club “renew that tradition.”

    But apparently not everyone was on board — including the staff at the Des Moines Social Club, which Roeder said booted the stripper from their building.

    Read Huffington Post

    Photo by istolethetv

  • An underwater drone has found the Loch Ness Monster but not the one many people are hoping for.

    The fabled Loch Ness Monster, affectionately known as Nessie in Scotland, has been the focus of searches for decades but all efforts have failed. However, an autonomous underwater vehicle has found a 30-foot model of the Loch Ness Monster in the freshwater Scottish lake.

    The model appeared in the 1970 movie The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes but it sank in the loch. Munin, the underwater drone operated by Norwegian company Kongsberg Maritime, has scanned the depths of the lake and captured images of the lost Nessie model.

    Adrian Shine, a Loch Ness expert, says that the measurements, location and shape of the model matches that of the movie prop.

    “We have found a monster, but not the one many people might have expected. The model was built with a neck and two humps and taken alongside a pier for filming of portions of the film in 1969,” says Shine. “The director did not want the humps and asked that they be removed, despite warnings I suspect from the rest of the production that this would affect its buoyancy. And the inevitable happened. The model sank.”

    Read Tech Times and Time

    Photo by zoonabar

  • A diver who was bitten by a bull shark while free diving for cobia is being treated at the hospital, fire fighters say. Terri Parker reports.

  • Michael Phelps talking about Sun Yang during the interview with Sina Sports

  • The International Aquatics Federation says that air conditioning should be installed at the Olympic Park aquatics center, but the city continues to assess the situation.

    FINA Executive Director Cornel Marculescu described the venue to ATR as an “indoor, outdoor pool complex,” that could use more ventilation at the pool level. Marculescu remains impressed with the venue after seeing it in use, saying athlete feedback remains positive.

    In order to save money on energy costs, the aquatics venue has no artificial ventilation system. The temporary venue is wrapped in a fabric that will facilitate a natural cooling system for spectators and athletes.

    “The only thing for us now is to be sure that the level of the pool can have this artificial ventilation so the athletes have the necessary air and it is not too hot or too cold depending on the weather outside,” Marculescu added. “In general what I hear is the athletes are happy, the water is okay, and they feel good in the pool. No news is good news.”

    The aquatics venue is currently in control of the Rio 2016 organizing committee. Rio city hall is currently assessing the need for a potential air conditioning system, but has no timeline for when that decision will be reached, a spokesperson told ATR.

    Read Around the Rings

  • Considering the provisional suspension imposed by FINA to swimmer Yulia Efimova (RUS) and the recent WADA recommendations on the use of Meldonium, the FINA Doping Panel decided to maintain the provisional suspension of this athlete, until a hearing of Ms Efimova is held by the FINA Doping Panel.

    Read FINA

    Photo courtesy of svoem.dk, CC BY 2.0

  • Disgraced former Olympic swimming champion Park Tae-hwan remains undecided on entering the upcoming national team trials, after he has been ruled out of this year’s Summer Games, his agency said Tuesday.

    Park has registered to compete in the men’s 100m, 200m, 400m and 1,500m freestyle races at the 88th Dong-A Swimming Competition starting on April 25 in Gwangju, some 330 kilometers south of Seoul, according to the meet organizers.

    The competition will double as the second round of the national team trials for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics.

    The deadline to register falls at 6 p.m. Tuesday. Swimmers may still withdraw after the deadline.

    Park, who recently completed an 18-month ban for doping, is training in Australia, but there may be little point to him in racing in Gwangju because he is ineligible for the Olympics.

    Read Yonhap News Agency

    Photo by KOREA.NET – Official page of the Republic of Korea