Swimmer's Daily

  • A teenage boy has died after spending approximately 45 minutes underwater in Lake Washington at Mt. Baker Beach in Seattle, a Harborview Medical Center spokesperson said.

    The teen went underwater at around 6 P.M. Sunday, Seattle firefighters said. Divers pulled him out of the water and medics rushed him to Harborview Medical Center. A hospital spokesperson told KOMO 4 at around 9:45 P.M. Sunday that the teen did not survive.

    “You heard her yelling ‘It’s my boyfriend! He will not come up! Someone please call his dad,’” said witness Dejanae Johnson.

    Read Komo News

    Photo by Marcin Wichary

  • Candice Alley can’t hide the hurt. ‘I ran out of tears, it was so exhausting,’ she says, remembering the dying days of her five-year marriage to Olympic legend Grant Hackett.

    She has moved on with her life. But Grant’s remarkable pool comeback – creating new headlines about the golden couple’s split – has finally forced her to speak out for the first time.

    Until today, she has stayed silent for the sake of their five-year-old twins, Jagger and Charlize.

    Away from the spotlight of her singing career, she’s a self-confessed homebody who prefers to keep her private life just that way – private.

    But Candice feels she must express her point of view following Grant’s latest claims about their relationship, especially his take on the disastrous Derby Day row that culminated in a trashed apartment and their eventual separation.

    Former pop star Candice, 32, sadly comments: “It was new for me to read in newspapers that Grant said our marriage was one of those that was probably doomed to fail from the start, and that he wanted to leave.

    Read New Idea

  • A former Michigan Lakeshore Aquatics swim coach has been sentenced to probation after he exposed himself at a Douglas hotel pool while sexting his wife.

    Troy Emmons, 53, was sentenced May 29 in Allegan County District Court on a charge of attempted aggravated indecent exposure.

    In a plea deal, Allegan County prosecutors agreed to dismiss charges of indecent exposure and disorderly conduct.

    Emmons also was fined $1,415 and paid it at sentencing, a court clerk said.

    See mlive

  • While pools and beaches are a source of fun for Canadian families during the summer, they also pose a risk for drowning. The Lifesaving Society has developed a program to teach school children three critical skills needed to survive a fall in deep water.

    In Canada, drowning is the number one cause of unintentional injury death among children four and younger, according to the society. It is the second leading cause of preventable death for children under the age of 10.

    In 2014, the World Health Organization published the first-ever report on drowning, deeming it a public health issue. It found that every day, more than 40 people lose their lives to drowning globally. Yet, despite the high death rate, there are no global strategies for drowning prevention.

    The WHO issued a list of 10 actions that can help prevent drowning, and among them was to teach school-age children basic swimming and water safety skills.

    Barbara Byers, public education director at The Lifesaving Society, said teaching school children basic swimming skills is similar to giving them an “immunization” against drowning.

    “If we can teach children these skills while they’re young, then they can hopefully be safe for the rest of their lives,” she told CTV’s Canada AM.

    To help teach Canadian children basic swimming survival skills, the society developed the “Swim to Survive” program.

    The program teaches children three basic skills needed to survive an unexpected fall into deep water. The steps are:

    • Roll into deep water: This will help simulate what it feels like to fall off a boat or off a dock.
    • Tread water for one minute: This teaches swimmers to get their adrenaline under control, calm down, and make a plan on how to get to safety.
    • Swim 50 metres: This will allow swimmers to get to safety, as most people who drown are located close to shore or the side of a pool.

    See CTV

     

    Photo by Sander van der Wel

  • Well, the latest M:I 5 trailer goes deep, with an intense underwater scene.

    It’s something the adrenalin junkie Cruise has always wanted to do. Cruise told USA TODAY that he worked extensively for the underwater scene shot without a cut, training to have underwater breath holds of 6 to 61/2 minutes.

    To put it in context, that’s the entire Rolling Stones version of “Sympathy for the Devil.” Watch portions in the new trailer below.

    Says Cruise:

    “It’s something I have always wanted to do. (Director Christopher McQuarrie) and I have been thinking about it since working on ‘Edge of Tomorrow.’ I have done a lot of underwater sequences. But we wanted to create a suspense underwater sequence without cuts. So doing that sequence was really interesting. We’re underwater and we’re doing breath-holds of 6 to 61/2 minutes. So I was doing all my training with the other stuff (on-set). It was very taxing stuff.”

    See more here on USA Today

  • How did a 13-year-old boy end up in a medically-induced coma after an incident at a pool inside a Buffalo school when school officials say the teen was walking and talking?

    A woman who was at the pool Tuesday at Waterfront School #95 shared this video with 7 Eyewitness News. It shows a very chaotic scene.

    Students from School #81 were at the pool that day testing out their boats made of recycled materials. In the video, you can see a boy going across the pool on one of those boats using a kayak paddle as other kids line the edges and play in the water.

    If you watch carefully, you can see 13-year-old Larryn Watkins come up for air near the kayak before becoming unresponsive. A short time passes before officials start shouting for kids to clear the pool and the teen is pulled out of the water.

    In another clip shared with 7 Eyewitness News, school officials work to resuscitate Larryn. You can see the teen moving his hand after his eyes open.

    See WKBW

    Full video

  • A warning from parents from East Tennessee Children’s Hospital in this week’s Nurses Know segment.

    We are learning more about germs floating around in lake, river or pool that could make you very sick.

    The Centers for Disease Control is warning swimmers about the risk of contracting Norovirus from the water. It’s the same bug blamed for sickening hundreds on cruise ships, causing severe stomach and intestinal illness.

    Darci Hodge, Registered Nurse and Infection Control Director at ETCH said the virus can be spread in water when water contaminated with germs is swallowed. That is why kids are greatest at risk for contracting this illness.

    Here’s a list of symptoms to watch for:

    • Diarrhea and vomiting
    • Severe stomach cramping
    • Fever
    • Headache
    • Body Aches

    “Prevention is very important,” said Hodge, who had the following tips for parents.

    • Don’t swim if you’ve had symptoms of diarrhea or vomiting.

    Read Local 8

    Photo by mark_irvine

  • In a recently launched “drought education” campaign, trade group the California Pool and Spa Association (CPSA) suggests that installing a backyard swimming hole is an effective — and super-fun! — way to conserve water as the state’s historic dry spell enters its fourth year.

    In fact, the Let’s Pool Together campaign claims that mindfully maintained residential swimming pools require far less water than lush, irrigated lawns. Citing “independent studies,” the campaign trumpets the fact that swimming pools, of which there are an estimated 1.8 million private ones in California, use roughly half the amount of water that a lawn uses in the same period.

    And as for that massive first fill, the campaign claims that the average amount of water needed to fill a new pool in its first year, 26,250 gallons, is still less — about 3,750 gallons less — than the amount of precious H2O needed to maintain a 800-square-foot lawn’s desired shade of non-brown. The savings can grow even greater in subsequent years after the pool is first installed and filled.

    Many water experts believe that regularly irrigated traditional lawns and residential pools use around the same amount of water, although there is indeed the potential for a pool to consume less depending on numerous different factors including size, age and maintenance.

    CPSA Chairman Mike Geremia lays it all out in a news release:

    Many people assume pools and spas waste water, but that’s just not true. Because pools and spas often replace traditional lawns, which are very water-intensive, every pool and spa actually saves thousands of gallons of water per year. Yet even with those water savings, we know there are steps pool and spa owners can take this summer to potentially save even more. That’s why we’re launching the Let’s Pool Together campaign — to ensure that pool and spa owners do their part during the drought.

    Read more here on mmn.com

    Photo by oatsy40

  • Robin Dale Oen believes that the life of his brother Alexander could have saved, and criticises the support team for failing to notice his heart disease, instead believing that his symptoms were because of a pinched nerve.

    – “If we weren’t athletes, if we were like the man in the street, then Alexander would definitely be alive today. A general practitioner would have discovered the heart disease very early,” says Dale Oen.

    Alexander Dale Oen’s died at the height of his sport career. He died suddenly and without warning while on altitude camp with the Norwegian national swim team in April 2012.

    Alexander knew that heart disease ran in the family, but didn’t suffer any symptoms that something was seriously wrong until during the winter three years ago.

    – “He had a heart attack about three or four months before he died, but it wasn’t discovered until after he died,” says Dale Oen.

    Sad about what happened

    Roald Bahr, chief physician at the Norwegian élite sports center Olympiatoppen wishes that they had managed to discover the illness.

    – “We respect the family’s message, and their sorrow. We share their grief. Both Olympiatoppen and our attending physician gave their unreserved apology to the family when the autopsy report was presented. And we still stand behind this apology. Alexander Dale Oen’s heart disease could have been discovered, but neither we nor our experts managed to do this. This we regret.”

    Common gene defect

    First after the autopsy, came the diagnosis. The disease got a name: Familial hypercholesterolemia. This is a hereditary genetic disorder, and it is possible that as many as half a percent of all Norwegians have it, says Ottar Nygård, professor of cardiology at the University of Bergen.

    – The disease is easily discovered as you only need to take a normal blood sample and send it to the state hospital. They the do a gene test, and you get an answer within a week.

    How dangerous is the disease if you get medicine for it?

    – If you take medicine, then some believe that the risk for getting a heart attack is on par with that for those who don’t have the gene defect, says NygÃ¥rd.

    Not bitter

    The older brother says he is not bitter that the gene defect was not discovered, despite sympon and family history. But he hopes that people can learn from Alexander Dale Oen’s death.

    Shouldn’t you yourself have thought about the possibility that you could be sick?

    – “We knew that there was sickness in the family, but we thought that we couldn’t be struck by it. We were élite athletes after all, and our focus was on becoming the best in the world.”

    Read and watch NRK (in Norwegian)