Swimmer's Daily

  • The 30-old-year Dutchwoman admitted she was shocked when she was told she was ill.

    “It is obviously very scary when you hear this news,” Dekker said in a statement posted on the website of the Dutch Swimming Federation.

    “For three years, I’ve been preoccupied with getting ready for the Rio Olympics, and then I heard this.

    “Suddenly, my life became very quiet and I could see that everything was relative.

    “I took a few days to get used to the news, but now I am looking with confidence towards the future.

    “I am focusing on being positive and giving my all to recover well.

    “I can only focus on the things I can influence, but I have certainly not put the Rio Olympics out of my head.”

    Read insidethegames.biz

  • When Munro was found, he was malnourished after an epic 2000-kilometre swim across sub-Antarctic waters.

    But now he weighs a healthy 3.3 kilograms and has a new home and a legion of fans at Taronga Zoo.

    This week, the zoo’s Fiordland crested penguin ran up to the scales, hopped on and then waited for his fishy treat.

    Read Sydney Morning Herald

  • Lebanon swimmer Casey McEuen gives us a look behind the scenes at the Willamette Conference Swimming Championships at Osborn Aquatic Center on Saturday, Feb., 13, 2016.

  • Raiders swimmer Kayla Fearrin is making some serious noise in the pool while at the same time overcoming adversity.

  • Prosecutors said Wednesday they have raided the headquarters of South Korea’s national swimming organization in eastern Seoul and the offices of its executive officer and other officials over suspicions they misappropriated government funds.

    The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office said they have raided the Korea Swimming Federation (KSF) and some 20 other related organizations, including the KSF’s branch office in Gangwon Province.

    One of the organization’s executive officers, whose identity was withheld, and other related officials have been arrested over the allegations.

    Computer hard drives and documents on projects supporting the country’s sports industry have been confiscated, according to prosecutors.

    The raid came a few days after the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced that it would stop providing subsidies to the national swimming body due to the alleged corruption.

    Read Yonhap News Agency

  • In the last few years, shark hysteria has reached all-time highs.There have been many different proposed solutions: sharks on Twitter, declaring open season for shark fishermen, netting beaches, and of course, hanging ragged chunks of meat off giant hooks, baiting them in, then killing them and dragging them out to sea. One solution stand out above the rest. It’s called Clever Buoy, and it makes a lot of sense. Much more sense than killing a species that is already in pretty dire straights, and one that we’re already killing millions of every year so we can eat soup and get boners, or whatever stupid thing someone stupid says that shark fins do. And now the Clever Buoy is finally getting in the water.

    See The Inertia and Clever Buoy

    https://youtu.be/QYHPe5xHcms

  • Guest post by Jez Birds, originally posted on SwimPath

    In keeping with our favourite tradition of fast stuff first, here’s a great little ultra short race skills set to improve the all important underwater phase in order to maintain that speed off the block and wall…

    Firstly, apt to reiterate that the purpose of the underwater kick is to maintain speed off the dive and turn, not to develop it! In contrast to a running sprint where speed needs to be built rapidly over the first part of the race, a swimmer is never again travelling as fast in the water as the moment that they first enter after the dive! And never again in the race until the short accelerative burst off the wall…

    (more…)

  • A Singaporean swimmer has seen his hopes of qualifying for the Zika-threatened Rio de Janeiro Olympics hampered by another mosquito-borne illness after he contracted dengue fever.

    Danny Yeo, a 25-year-old freestyle specialist, contracted the virus two weeks ago and said he was unlikely to be at 100 percent for his last Olympic trial at the Singapore National Age Group Championships (SNAG) from March 16-20.

    “If I said it wouldn’t affect me, it would be a lie,” he was quoted as saying in Monday’s Straits Times.

    Read Reuters and The Straits Times

  • Honestly, I didn’t think our Mediterranean vacation could get much better.

    The dozen of us on the trip had already swum several miles a day through astonishing turquoise waters off Kas, a remote village on Turkey’s southwest coast, where cliffs soar up from the sea, the soft air is scented with jasmine and views of the glimmering bay are downright therapeutic.

    Amid a ring of seven islands earlier in the week, our group of open-water swimmers glided alongside limestone coastlines, the sunlight spangling the underwater landscape of smooth boulders and serrated pillars. We swam over marine forests swaying in the current. We crossed into the open sea, pulling rhythmically through a panorama of royal blue, a laser show of sunbeams funneling into a gleaming ring in the depth.

    “It’s like swimming in the sky,” my reluctant-swimmer wife, Susan, would say later in our breezy hotel room.

    Read The New York Times