• A 20-year-old woman is alive Wednesday night after a dramatic rescue at a popular Minneapolis beach.

    The woman and a 17-year-old girl were trying to swim to a floating dock on Lake Harriet just before 5 p.m. Both went underwater, and the teenager made it safely back to shore — but the woman never resurfaced.

    “For the first couple of minutes it was scary stuff,” Zachary Beckman said.

    See CBS Minnesota

  • A 17-year-old Missouri star athlete died of an apparent heart attack while racing her friends in a swimming pool, her devastated mother said.

    Emma Aronson, an incoming senior at Lee’s Summit High School, passed away last Friday when her heart stopped during a playful swimming competition with pals at the neighborhood pool.

    “She was racing in the pool against the boys and of course, she wanted to beat them. And most of the time she did,” mom Laura Aronson told reporters.

    “She got to the edge and said, in a very small voice, ‘I’m so tired,’ and then that was it.”

    See NY Daily News

  • Hundreds of demonstrators descended in McKinney, Texas on Monday — just two days after a video that captured a police officer’s use of force against a black, female teenager went viral.

    Elroy Johnson, a 25-year-old teacher who grew up in the neighborhood, told The Huffington Post that he couldn’t recall the last time he witnessed a protest that large in his town.

    The crowd gathered near the Craig Ranch Community Pool — the same site where 19-year-old Tatiana Rhodes’ now-infamous pool party was held last Friday. The teen’s party, which was chaperoned by her mother, Laushana Burks, was meant to celebrate the end of the summer. Burks told HuffPost that, instead, the gathering ended with violence after two white women made racist comments to a group of black teens and subsequently attacked them.

    Community members rallied in the neighborhood to speak out against the racist actions of the two women who apparently made comments like “you black f****r” and “that’s why you live in Section 8 homes.” Demonstrators also called for the firing of a police officer who was captured on video manhandling a young black girl and wielding his gun at two black teenage boys who tried to help her.

    “A number of community members made it known they were upset about what happened at the pool party on Friday,” Johnson said. “Seeing all of that action was definitely amazing.”

    See Huffington Post

  • Murmansk – it’s in the extreme northwest of Russia, it’s the only city above the Arctic Circle, and it has an average annual temperature of -1°C. It was the perfect place for world-renowned distance swimmer Christof Wandratsch to claim the title of Ice Swimming World Champion.

    See REDBULL

  • Kazan has now developed the most advanced sporting infrastructure in all of Russia and has one of the most advanced Aquatic facilities in the world. More than 3.5 billion viewers are looking forward to following the world’s best performing in the 6 FINA aquatic disciplines. We welcome one and all to Kazan from 24 July to 9 August!

  • Cricket, gymnastics and swimming will take funding hits while rugby league and basketball will enjoy noteworthy boosts in an overhaul of annual participation distributions that sports receive from Australian taxpayers.

    Federal Minister for Health and Sport Sussan Ley will announce in Sydney on Thursday what is hoped will be a clearer, and more accountable, method of sharing the $22million sports will receive in 2015-16 specifically to encourage people to participate.

    In what the Australian Sports Commission has called a new “categorisation framework”, seven sports – football, basketball, cricket, soccer, netball, rugby league and tennis – have received top-tier classification. Based on their leading participation figures, these “category A” sports will receive the new maximum annual participation distribution sum of $950,000 from the government.

    At the lower end, category F sports, which in 2015-16 will include Olympic disciplines boxing, diving and weightlifting, will receive a $50,000 allocation.

    The redesign of participation funding follows a 12-month review and restructuring. While Fairfax has been told all sports support the logic of being more accountable about participation data, it is understood some are unhappy about their classifications.

    Gymnastics – rated a category B sport by the ASC in the new scheme and eligible for $650,000 in participation funding from the government – is said to be a case in point.

    The revamp will also cause some sports, notably swimming, to adjust their future participation budgets.

    Swimming received $866,000 in participation funds from the government in 2014-15, but having now been ranked as a category B sport it qualifies for only a $650,000 sum.

    Sports in this position will receive “transition funding” in 2015-16. For the past four years swimming has had what is now considered a relatively over-funded participation distribution contribution from government.

    In that period it received an additional $250,000 per annum for the area, and its 2014-15 participation total from government was $866,000.

    Read The Sydney Morning Herald

  • A diverse group of women show how swimsuits have changed from wool ones-pieces to bikinis.

  • Dutch authorities have declined to host the Europe-wide sports competition, saying it would cost too much, only weeks after their bid was accepted. The inaugural 2015 Games are set to open on Friday in Baku, Azerbaijan.

    (more…)

  • I had made it through the first few weeks. The physical exhaustion was beginning to overcome the mental fatigue, and all I wanted was a long night’s sleep.

    But it wasn’t easy.

    Randy had been sick from cancer for a few months now, but even after a week, the news that my coach of 13 years was being moved to palliative care still took up a majority of my consciousness.

    I thought about it in the silence of our hotel room, at the pool, lap after lap, and almost everywhere in between.

    It left me with a series of questions: How would his family cope? What would our future hold? And, most importantly, how would Randy swallow that kind of news? How does anyone stay sane knowing his death is imminent?

    I told myself sleep would help.

    Maybe I would find answers tomorrow.

    Read Ryan Cochrane’s post for CBC Sports