Swimmer's Daily

  • Hesham Modamani looked out at the sea separating him and his dream of getting to Europe, the continent that could finally free him from the horrors back at home in Syria. The 24-year old felt nervous.

    Modamani couldn’t afford to pay the $1,350 ticket for a smuggler to ferry him across the channel between the coast of Turkey and the nearest Greek island.

    Swimming, he decided, was his best chance. The one-time college student had traveled all the way from the Damascus suburb of Daraya to Turkey’s west coast. He couldn’t give up now.

    Modamani turned to his new friend and accomplice Feras Abukhalil, a fellow Syrian. They strapped on their blue life vests and packed away their passports and cell phones in waterproof bags.

    Then they jumped.

    See CNN

    https://youtu.be/B5HSAR84EYo

  • Words from the translator:

    I don’t know if you know about Sun Yang
    I don’t know if you have read about him on the news
    But if you would like to take some time to watch this video, I’m sure he will leave you an impression

    He is a big boy, he is very simple
    His emotions are very straightforward
    He laughs when he is happy
    He cries when he is sad, when he is too happy, when he is winning or when he is losing (yes he cries a lot)

    Somehow the media made him seem very…‘evil’
    Yes he had made mistakes, I’m sure everybody does, and he’s got his punishment and sanction
    But he is trying every effort to correct them

  • On this episode we’re talking about 3 ways to keep your pool water warm to make the season just a little longer.

  • Chinese Olympic swimmer Sun Yang revealed his expectations for the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics.

  • Watch 2016 Chef de Mission Kitty Chiller, Australian Swimming Team Head Coach Jacco Verhaeren and swim team members Bronte Campbell, Emily Seebohm and Grant Hackett talk about the Swimming Australia Rio protocol camp.

  • Olympic and world champion Ruta Meilutyte had surgery on a broken elbow after falling off her bicycle.

    The Plymouth-based Lithuanian, 18, suffered the injury on Friday and had the operation on Monday.

    “It’s going to be a four-week process before she’s back in the water doing regular-type swimming,” her coach Jon Rudd told BBC Sport.

    “It’s not too desperate at all with us being well over 40 weeks away from the Olympic Games.”

    Read BBC

  • On the Morning Swim Show, Craig Lord, leading journalist and authority on political issues in competitive swimming, sits down with Brent Rutemiller, Publisher of Swimming World Magazine to discuss the 11 grievances against FINA and why the American Swim Coaches Association voted to replace FINA rather than reform it.

    See Swimmming World

  • “CBS This Morning” is kicking off a new series, “Pushing the Limits,” where we profile seemingly ordinary people doing remarkable things. Katie Ledecky is called “the best swimmer on the planet.” She started building her legacy at age 15, winning her first gold medal at the London Olympics. She’s broken 10 world records, one of them, almost by accident. Norah O’Donnell spoke to Ledecky on how she sets — and beats — her personal bests.

    http://youtu.be/vubMuQ4VP54

  • The day before the formal competitive start of the 2015 AIDA Individual Depth Championships (#aidaworldchampionship) has seen some fallout from the recent error that caused the dive line to be set 10m deeper than expected during a World Record attempt by Guillaume Nery and helped contribute to a black out and squeeze to the French Freediver.

    Judges Robert King (World Championship Jury Vice President) and Ute Gessman have resigned their positions on the World Championship jury.  They will be replaced by Fran Rose (as Senior Judge) and Alexander Russu with Kimmo Lahtinen as back-up.

    This unprecedented move, just a day before the competitors take to the dive platform to compete for the World Championships, has been received with mixed reviews by the wider community.  Some divers and athletes are unhappy that senior experienced judges are allowed to resign just before the competition starts, whereas others have seen the move as the judges taking responsibility by an incident widely regarded as serious in nature.

    Read Deeper Blue

    Photo by jayhem