Swimmer's Daily

  • Swimming power Australia has given up finding a replacement for departing high performance manager Michael Scott before next year’s Rio Olympics and instead given head coach Jacco Verhaeren added responsibilities.

    Scott will start as CEO of Rowing Australia in May and governing body Swimming Australia was mindful of the time constraints in bedding down a new manager with the Games looming.

    “The fact we are only 15 months out from the Rio Olympics, we were mindful throughout the recruitment process of ensuring that we had the right individual who could immediately insert themselves into our High Performance environment, to ensure a very positive outcome in Rio,” SA CEO Mark Anderson said in a statement.

    “We have a world class coach in Jacco Verhaeren who has evolved extremely well in the role of National Head Coach and across the Australian swimming high performance system.

    “We believe he is the logical choice at this stage of the Olympic preparation to take over the team.”

    Read Eurosport

  • A day after he braved the filthy waters of the Gowanus Canal, Christopher Swain said he was feeling as good as new.

    “I’m feeling healthy and happy,” Swain, 47, said Thursday. “No problems at all.”

    Swain swam a portion of the polluted Brooklyn waterway Wednesday to highlight the need to clean it. The environmental activist cut short the stunt due to approaching storms after paddling less than half the length of the canal.

    Read NY Daily News

  • “Ian, Ian, Ian,” squeals 8-year-old Anna as she spots her friend across a pool in the South Bronx. She splashes with excitement until he gingerly joins her in the water.

    Five years ago, Anna wouldn’t even utter “Mama.”

    Anna and Ian, 7, are on the autism spectrum. Among their challenges is learning how to swim. With 1 in 68 American children falling on the spectrum, many with a penchant for wandering near water, parents and advocates believe swim safety is crucial.

    That’s why the nonprofit Autism Speaks began a year ago to help swim programs around the country provide more personal attention, patience and specialized techniques often required for kids with special needs like those of Anna and Ian.

    Among the recipients of $275,000 in grants issued the first year is Agnes Davis, president of swim, swim, swim I SAY. She’s a kindly kid whisperer in a swim cap who makes special cupcakes for her charges as she gently encourages them to master lifesaving skills.

    “Agnes is a godsend,” said Anna’s dad, Maurice Shalah of Manhattan. “We tried so many different programs since she was about 2 years old and she never learned to swim until we came here. This program, after two sessions, she was swimming.”

    Read ABC News

    https://youtu.be/9peOre2QCVA

  • New National Coach appointed in Danish swimming

    Canadian Dean Boles is the man from 1 June who will head the Danish Swimming Federation’s collaboration with clubs on the development of the strong senior high performance environments.

    Dean Boles comes from a job as a provincial coach and mentor coach in the Canadian province of Ontario, and before that he coached swimmers for 4 Canadian Olympic squads.

    With the appointment of Dean Boles, the coaching staff in the Danish Swimming Federa-tion’s Sports Department is now at full strength. Dean is going to work in close collabora-tion with National Head Coach Nick Juba, NTC Coach Stefan Hansen and Talent Manager Thomas Stub on the sporting objectives for the sport of swimming in Denmark.

    The Danish Swimming Federation is delighted about the appointment of the National Coach

    The Danish Swimming Federation is pleased to have reached an agreement with Dean Boles and High Performance Manager Lars Green Bach is looking forward to continuing the work that has already begun.

    “We are getting a strong professional and experienced candidate with Dean Boles to con-tinue the work that National Head Coach Nick Juba and the high performance clubs started a few years ago to strengthen our senior high performance environments. It forms a central part of our sporting strategy, the 2016 Danish Swimming Plan, and it has therefore been important to us that the work can be continued and developed with a new National Coach,” says High Performance Manager Lars Green Bach and continues:

    “Dean has the experience of club environments and the national squad in Canada, experi-ence as a coach at the highest international level and experience in facilitating the devel-opment of senior high performance environments through close collaboration with swim-mers, coaches and leaders. We see Dean as a positive, winning and passionate person, and we are convinced that Danish swimming will have good profile for the National Coach position in Dean.”

    While Nick Juba has overall responsibility for the sporting results and is directly responsi-ble for the Federation’s work with finalists and medal candidates in 2015 and 2016, Dean Boles will be responsible for working with the sporting development of swimmers with a 2020 perspective and their coaches. Both in terms of club environments and the Danish Swimming Federation’s national squads.

    Dean Boles: I admire Danish swimming

    Dean Boles talks about his new job as National Coach:
    “I’m very excited about my new position with Danish Swimming. I look forward to the chal-lenge for myself in the role as National Coach to work with the Sport Federation, the Coaches, Swimmers and Clubs to keep the promising momentum of world class swim-ming,” says Dean Boles and continues:

    “I have always admired and respected the focused approach and the results of the Scan-dinavian countries especially the past few years of Danish Swimming. I look forward to developing great relationships with the people of Denmark.”

    Team Denmark is also very pleased that the agreement with Dean Boles has fallen into place and the Sports Department is at full strength again:

    “The 2016 Olympics are upon us and it is therefore important that there is full focus on creating the optimal preparations leading up to Rio. National Head Coach Nick Juba can now concentrate even more on the job at hand and entrust the task to ensure a good foundation for the future for Dean Boles. We believe this can increase the quality in both areas, and we look forward to both following and contributing to the continued develop-ment of the high performance and talent work in Danish swimming,” says Lone Hansen, Director of Team Danmark.

    Facts about the Danish Swimming Federation’s new National Coach

    Dean Boles has coached swimmers for 4 Canadian Olympic squads from 1996-2008. Since 2009, he has worked as provincial coach/mentor coach in the Canadian province of Ontario. He has worked with, among other things, the development of senior high perfor-mance environments in collaboration with clubs and coaches, performance analyses and development trends in high performance swimming, as well as sporting strategies for clubs and the Canadian National Swimming Association. He also has organisational experience from the boards of Swim Ontario and Swimming Canada, and most recently he has been involved in the development of the Ontario Swimming Academy in association with a newly established High Performance Centre in Toronto.

    Press release from the Danish Swimming Federation

  • Moving further into the weird and wacky, is the new invention out of the intriguing nation — True Wetsuits. But these aren’t any old wetsuits, these are actual suits. Because being literal has never been so cool.

    Most surfers would agree there would be nothing better than getting to the ocean after a hard day’s work, grabbing the surfboard and running straight in. The five minutes it takes to change are perhaps the most wasted in a young surfer’s life.

    See Mashable

    https://youtu.be/UutiBRDxJ0U

  • The races were tight, the finishes competitive. But the times were off.

    For the male swimmers at the Arena Pro Swim Series last week, the meet raised concerns. Mostly that, in most of their individual events, their times were not close to the best times in the world this year.

    Even 18-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps, for example, who won two events (100 butterfly and 100 freestyle) in his return from his six-month suspension, did not crack the top 20 in the world with his times in either event. He wasn’t alone; event finals across the board were won with times significantly slower than what the best in the world has posted this year.

    On the women’s side, that wasn’t true, due in large part to Katie Ledecky and her penchant for breaking or threatening to break her own world records. But the lagging men’s times were eye-opening, and they go beyond this specific meet.

    Read USA Today

    Photo by marcopako 

  • A #SwimBiz Presentation by Debbie Hesse, Executive Director, USA Swimming Foundation

  • Documentary filmmaker and diver Johnny Debnam, 29, was snorkeling with friends two weeks ago when the friendly giant of the deep came in for a closer look.

    “We were snorkeling in about 4 meters of water. We were filming the big stingrays and I was freediving down to the bottom,” Debnam said.

    “This particular ray actually swam over the top of me twice and completely covered my body.”

    See New York Post

  • The head coach of Chinese swimming team has tried to keep a low key ahead of July’s world championships in Kazan, Russia, saying that it looks a mission impossible to repeat their feat of winning five gold medals at the last worlds.

    “It will be very tough for us to win five titles as we did last time in Barcelona, because top swimmer Sun Yang is yet to reach peak form,” Yao Zhengjie told Xinhua Thursday after the conclusion of the Chines national swimming championships.

    Sun Yang, who claimed three individual freestyle gold medals at the Barcelona worlds in 2013, swept four freestyle events – 200m, 400m, 800m and 1,500m – at the national championships, held this week in Baoji, Shaanxi Province.

    But, his 200m free time, 1:45.75, was slower than German veteran Paul Biedermann, who timed 1:45.60 in the German championships. Sun’s 400m free time, 3:44.53, ranked fourth in the world, while his signature 1,500m free time, 15:00.73, was only sixth on the global ranks and far behind his own world record.

    Australia’s 18-year-old Mack Horton, who holds the world fastest time in three events, is expected to be Sun’s main threat in Kazan.

    “Sun trained well in Australia, but the results here were not so good,” said Yao. “It’s probably because it is his first competition this year, and hopefully he will swim better at the Kazan Worlds.”

    Similarly, double Olympic champion Ye Shiwen is struggling for form despite winning two medleys at the Nationals. Ye, who failed to win a medal at the 2013 Barcelona Worlds, ranked seventh in the 200m while fourth in the 400m in the world.

    Read Xinhua