Swimmer's Daily

  • The Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro will be the last Olympics for Michael Phelps (USA). Phelps can look back to an incredible and unique career. He won 22 Olympic Medals (18 Gold Medals) and set more records than any other swimmer in the world.

  • Arkady Vyatchanin loves his country.

    He just doesn’t want to represent Russia at the Olympics.

    That stance has left the swimmer in legal limbo with the Rio Games less than five months away, the pawn in a political tug-of-war that again shows just how little the guys in charge actually care about the athletes.

    “I guess I underestimated the burden that I’ll carry,” said Vyatchanin, who lives and trains in the United States and wants to swim for Serbia in what very well could be his last shot at the Olympics.

    Vyatchanin has an impressive resume. At the 2008 Beijing Games, he captured a pair of bronze medals, finishing behind American winners Aaron Peirsol in the 100-meter backstroke and Ryan Lochte in the 200 back. He also has four medals from the world championships — three silvers and a bronze.

    After a disappointing performance at the London Olympics, where Vyatchanin failed to qualify for the final in either backstroke event, he had a falling-out with the Russian swimming federation over his decision to begin training in Gainesville, Florida, under renowned coach and longtime Lochte mentor Gregg Troy.

    More troubling, Vyatchanin had serious concerns about just how committed his country was to the battle against doping, a stance that turned out to be very well-founded given the almost daily revelations of ramping cheating throughout Russian sports.

    Read AP The Big Story

  • Yusra Mardini is a Syrian refugee hoping to qualify for the Olympic Games in 2016. Just seven months ago the 17-year-old made the journey from Turkey to Greece by boat.
    More about this swimmer’s journey: http://on.mash.to/1PgHQzU

    See Mashable

  • With the Summer Olympics set to take over Brazil in August of this year, issues surrounding water pollution along some of Rio’s beaches and waterways are being cast into the media spotlight. For years, surfers and beachgoers who frequent Rio’s gorgeous shorelines have complained of falling ill due to poor water quality. Prior to the start of the Rio Pro last year, the WSL was forced to cancel their backup venue due to pollution issues.

    In a scathing report published by the Associated Press—who referenced a pair of water-quality studies of the area taken over the past year, including samples taken from Guanabara Bay, home to many Olympic events—high viral levels from untreated sewage were found, leading many countries and their athletes to protest to governing bodies.

    So just how polluted are these beaches and waterways?  “We’re talking about an extreme environment, where the pollution is so high that exposure is imminent and the chance of infection very likely,” said Kristina Mena, a waterborne virus expert and professor of public health at the University of Texas. “Those virus levels are widespread. It’s not just along the shoreline, but it’s elsewhere in the water. Therefore, it’s going to increase the exposure of the people who come into contact with those waters.”

    Last year, Kelly Slater said that he believed the contamination level of Rio’s water made him sick.

    Experts have likened swimming in the waters where the samples were pulled to swimming in raw sewage, resulting in “an extreme environment, where the pollution is so high that exposure is imminent and the chance of infection very likely.”
    Read more at http://www.surfermag.com/features/contaminated-water-plagues-rio/#LJUKIF7Z5ZYTS2XW.99

    Read Surfer

  • Swimming is “not a clean sport” and needs an athletics-style investigation to ensure fair racing at Rio 2016, according to a leading coach.

    Briton Jon Rudd guided Plymouth-based Lithuanian Ruta Meilutyte to Olympic gold at London 2012.

    Meilutyte’s main rival, Yuliya Efimova, faces a possible lifetime ban after testing positive for a banned substance for the second time in her career.

    “There’s no doubt in my mind, we’re not a clean sport,” Rudd told BBC Sport.

    “It was a shock the first time Yuliya tested positive and it’s disappointing a talented athlete has chosen this route to try and achieve her ambitions.”

    Russian world champion Efimova is just one high-profile example of a much bigger problem for Russian sport.

    From the beginning of 2010 to the end of 2015 a total of 27 swimmers tested positive for banned substances and served bans.

    Read BBC

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  • Titled Russian swimmer Yuliya Efimova can explain the presence of doping in her organism only herself, Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko told TASS on Thursday.

    The All-Russian Swimming Federation confirmed on Thursday that it had temporarily suspended Efimova from all swimming-related competitions because the swimmer might have violated the anti-doping rules. Earlier, it was reported that the 23-year-old athlete is suspected of using meldonium, which the World Anti-Doping Agency included in its list of prohibited formulas as of January 1, 2016.

    Asked if the All-Russian Swimming Federation had provided any explanations how the outlawed drug could have gotten into Efimova’s blood, Mutko answered that no one had explained anything to anybody. “It’s only the athlete himself who can explain it,” he added.

    Read TASS

  • Four British swimmers, including triple world champion Adam Peaty, should be awarded world records they were denied in 2014 after officials failed to test them for a specific drug, the Court of Arbitration for Sport said on Friday.

    The swimmers – Peaty, Francesca Halsall, Jemma Lowe and Chris Walker Hebborn – have already broken their own records, but the ruling means the previous records will now be recognized by the Federation Internationale de Natation, the body that administers international swimming competitions.

    The four swimmers had won the 4×100-metre mixed medley at the European championships in Berlin in August 2014 with a time of three minutes and 44 seconds. Peaty also won the 50-metre breaststroke with a time of 26.62 seconds at the same competition. Both times were records in 2014.

    But FINA refused to recognize the records because the four had not been tested for the banned substance EPO. Although they had undergone other tests which showed no abnormalities, only a selection of samples at the event were tested for EPO before being destroyed.

    FINA rules state that “no world record shall be recognized without a negative doping test certificate for all prohibited substances or prohibited methods identified on the prohibited list for which an analytical technique is available.”

    The court of arbitration ruled that the absence of EPO tests “should not fall to the detriment of the athletes and lead to the non-recognition of the world records.”

    Read WHBL

  • Aquatics athletes will be permitted to compete under the Mexican flag at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games despite the national governing body remaining suspended from the International Swimming Federation (FINA), it has been announced.

    This follows special negotiations between FINA, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Mexican Olympic Committee and its President Carlos Padilla.

    The Mexican Swimming Federation was “temporarily suspended” by FINA earlier this year after they “broke contractual obligations” by withdrawing last February as host of the 2017 FINA World Championships.

    They were also hit with a $5 million (£3.5 million/€4.5 million) fine, which they are currently refusing to pay amid an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

    It appeared that the suspension meant Mexican swimmers and divers would be forced to compete under the FINA flag at Rio 2016 rather than under their national one, something that had prompted huge protests within the Central American nation.

    “After several negotiations I conducted last week with the IOC and FINA in Lausanne, our petition was accepted that our country involved integrating water activities as part of the national team under the colours and patriotic symbols in competitions and official events,” Padilla announced at a press conference.

    This should avoid a repeat of the situation seen at recent World Cup events, where Mexican athletes have reportedly covered their FINA uniforms with cartoons and mocking drawings in a sign of protest.

    Read Inside The Games

    Photo by Rob Young

  • You’ve heard the sayings:

    “If you build it, they will come.”

    The Columbus Aquatic Center in Columbus, Georgia. 03/09/16
    The Columbus Aquatic Center in Columbus, Georgia. 03/09/16 Mike Haskey mhaskey@ledger-enquirer.com
    Or how about, “Don’t have kids if you can’t afford them.”

    The city decided to build a $10.6 million baby and apparently never figured out how much money it would cost to take care of it.

    That’s where we are now.

    Read Ledger-Enquirer