Swimmer's Daily

  • Twenty-five beaches in England may fail to meet tough new EU standards for bathing water quality that come into force on Friday.

    Water at the 417 bathing spots monitored by the Environment Agency (EA) in 2014 was cleaner than ever recorded, with 99.5% meeting standards for intestinal enterococci and E. coli, faecal bacteria that cause eye and ear infections and gastroenteritis. In 1988, a third of swimming spots failed the tests.

    But the data published by the EA on Friday show that authorities will have to redouble efforts to make all public swimming areas safe under the revised EU Bathing Water Directive, which comes into force this summer bathing season.

    Beaches including Blackpool Central and North, Clacton, Ilfracombe Wildersmouth, Hastings, Lyme Regis Church Cliff Beach, Morecambe South, Lancing and Walpole Bay at Margate are among those predicted to fall foul of the stricter rules this summer.

    The new European standards will cut acceptable levels of harmful bacteria in half. The change will bring the UK’ standards, which have stayed the same since the late 1970s, in line with advice from the World Heath Organisation.

    Read The Guardian

    Photo by michael_d_beckwith

  • The second part of Christophe Luxereau’s web series about 16-year-old French swimmer Anna is now ready. In French, but with possibility for YouTube translation.

  • Floodwaters may have shut down Wellington’s train stations, but a group of thrillseekers have found a fun but unsanitary way to take advantage.

    Heavy rain on Wednesday meant the stairwell at Porirua Train Station had completely filled up with water, prompting young locals to strip down and go for a swim.

    The footage shows a group of young people clinging onto the fence above before bombing into the brown water.

    “Awww, gross,” the woman filming the stunt says.

    Her concerns are well-established, given fears of potential sewage contamination.

    Local mayor Nick Leggett initially posted the video to his Facebook page, labelling it a “harmless bit of fun”.

    But he has since changed his tune.

    See ninemsn

    https://youtu.be/K2oEVmaSapU

  • Providing free swimming to children was a flagship policy by the Welsh Government designed at encouraging children to get fit and healthy at a time when levels of obesity are soaring.

    But as devastating cuts are handed down to local authorities, including the reduction of its National Free Swimming Initiative funding in February, children across Wales are the latest victims of austerity.

    It seems some authorities have pledged to maintain the provision, while others struggle to meet the costs themselves, prompting concerns that, while the Welsh Government is bound to protect frontline services, the long term health of some communities will be affected.

    Every authority in Wales has been affected by massive funding cuts and has had to adapt their budgets to mitigate the loss of provision, many of which have offered free swimming for under 16s in the summer holidays for more than ten years.

    Read WalesOnline

    Photo by Katelyn Fay

  • Myles Brown trained really hard last year. He was eyeing individual medals in the swimming pool at both the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the Fina short-course world championships (a 25m event) that took place in Doha, Qatar, in December.

    When neither materialised, he was really disappointed – so much so that he decided to take a break from swimming. “The pressure and expectations [from within myself] got the better of me,” he tells me at a coffee shop in Westville, Durban. “I didn’t achieve what I wanted to do and it was quite a big disappointment for me. Straight after Doha, I took one and a half months off swimming.”

    Brown spent that month surfing, playing golf and doing a lot of thinking. “A break is obviously not advisable for a swimmer, but for me it was necessary – to figure out why I was doing what I was doing and to regain my love and passion for the sport.”

    The break seems to have paid off for the 22-year-old, if his performances at April’s South African National Aquatic Championships in Durban are anything to go by.

    Brown dominated the freestyle events at the King’s Park swimming pool, speeding to gold in the 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m freestyle races. On the first day of the championships, he set a new South African 400m freestyle mark of 3:46.08, breaking a record set by Ryk Neethling in 1999. Four days later, Brown broke the South African 800m freestyle record set by Troyden Prinsloo in 2009.

    Read Mail & Guardian

    (a video from last year)

  • The 20-year-old became the first man to swim the 100m breaststroke inside 58 seconds when he set a time of 57.92 seconds at the British Swimming Championships in April,

    That came eight months after breaking the 50m breaststroke record.

    “There are lots of areas I can improve to get every millimetre out of myself,” Peaty told BBC East Midlands Today.

    “I am more pleased to be the first person to go under 58 seconds. I never thought I would get anywhere near it.

    “It boosted my confidence massively knowing I can go that fast.

    “It’s a great position to be in, but it’s now about re-focusing and re-motivating to see what I can get.”

    See video interview on BBC

    Image courtesy of deepbluemedia.eu

  • Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu talks about her stacked schedule at the Arena Pro Swim Series Charlotte.

    Hosszu explains how you have to enjoy the pain by swimming as hard as you can, even in prelims.

    Every race is an opportunity to get better as a swimmer.

    See Swimming World

  • A 19 year-old East Tennessee man was trying to spend a relaxing morning on the riverbank doing some fishing, but ended up in the water to save a man’s life.

    Daniel Baldwin is in love with the sport of fishing. If he’s not in class at The University of Tennessee, he’s on the river angling for the next big catch. One of his favorite spots for bass fishing is at the boat launch of Norris Lake in Tazewell.

    “I came here to shoot a video for YouTube about catching small mouths off these boats ramps in the summer time, but I walked away with something I’ll never forget for the rest of my entire life,” Baldwin said.

    Because he was shooting a video, Baldwin had his GoPro strapped to his chest and had just started recording. That’s when he noticed a man just a few feet off shore fall into the water from his boat and start going under the water. Baldwin said he immediately realized the elderly man couldn’t swim and rushed to help, jumping into the eight to 10 feet deep water to get the man above the water and onto the shore.

    The entire event was caught on camera from Baldwin’s point of view.

    “I threw my rod down and jumped in there didn’t even think about anything else except for getting that man out of the water,” he explained.

    See WKRG

  • Paul Giamatti has joined the small but impressive list of celebrities who were competitive swimmers before they achieved stardom, publicly discussing his past life in the pool during an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

    On the show to promote his upcoming film San Andreas, Giamatti talked about growing up in New Haven, Conn., as “the third-level backstroke guy” on his team. He doesn’t specify if the team was part of his high school or if it was a USA Swimming team.

    Giamatti also briefly talked about a training trip to the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in the 1980s, and said he thought he might be a member of the Hall of Fame. Though a few Hollywood celebrities are among the illustrious group of inductees, Giamatti is not one of them. He and Kimmel shared some laughs over a common occurrence among swimmers: the process of shaving.

    See Swimming World

    http://youtu.be/SkAQz81X3B4