Swimmer's Daily

  • For a myopic teenager who can barely see his hand in front of his face, Australia’s Mack Horton has a laser-sharp focus on his bid to restore his nation’s dynasty in the 1,500 metres freestyle.

    Swimming’s most gruelling pool event holds a special fascination in Australia, which has produced an honour-roll of 1,500 champions since Andrew “Boy” Charlton at the 1924 Paris Olympics.

    “I’m definitely aware of all the greats, Murray Rose, Kieren Perkins, (Grant) Hackett,” 18-year-old Horton told Reuters in a telephone interview of the legacy of Australia winning eight of the 24 Olympic titles in the race since the 1908 London Games.

    “I’ve grown up through the Hackett era, so that’s probably what I know best.

    “They’re massive shoes to fill … I’m just doing what I can do and do the best that I can do whilst enjoying it.”

    Read euronews

  • A French Swimming Federation official denied the French swim team used cocaine, a claim made by Olympic champion Amaury Leveaux in an autobiography.

    Lucien Gastaldello, the federation’s honorary vice president, said he was often head of a French swimming delegation that celebrated titles with champagne, but not cocaine, according to French media citing a Republican Lorrain report.

    Leveaux, a 2008 and 2012 Olympian, detailed specifically an instance at the London 2012 Olympics where at least one French swimmer used cocaine at a party.

    Read NBC OlympicTalk

  • Tonight at 21:25 CET on Danish TV2 SportsLab, see their facebook page

    Glæd jer til SportsLab i aften kl. 21.25 på TV 2 SPORT. Her får du blandt andet svømmestjernen Jeanette Ottesen at se i en noget anderledes svømmedragt.

    Posted by SportsLab on Tuesday, April 21, 2015

  • The Danish Swimming Federation has selected the squad to compete for World Championship medals in Kazan in August.

    There will be 12 Danish swimmers participating in the World Swimming Championships when they get underway in the Russian city of Kazan from August 2

    It is a very strong and experienced squad who will be competing for medal and final positions in a wide range of events. Lars Green Bach, the Danish Swimming Federation‟s High Performance Manager, has expectations for a number of medals for the Danish squad.

    “It‟s a relatively large Danish World Championship team and a squad where many of the swimmers have a good solid experience from previous World Championships. Swimmers like Jeanette Ottesen, Rikke Møller Pedersen and Lotte Friis have all previously won individual medals on the World Championship stage, and Mads Glæsner, Mie Østergaard Nielsen, Pernille Blume and Viktor Bromer are swimmers with significant international experience. It‟s a strong foundation for our chances in the Volga city”, says High Performance Manager Lars Green Bach and continues:

    (more…)

  • On April 22, former swimmer Amaury Leveaux publishes an explosive autobiography titled “Sex, drugs and swimming”, depicting a vitriolic portrait of the French swim team between lines of cocaine and unbridled sex. ‘Some of us didn’t frown upon a line from time to time, while it for others was not a line, but a highway of white powder that was sniffed at light speed’.

    He describes how they used it both at parties and during competitions – where it is doping classified.

    Soon…il arrive #sexedroguenatation #fayard

    A photo posted by Amaury Leveaux (@aleveaux) on

    Read Europe1 – and please excuse me if my translation is bad: Never having learned French, I am trying to get by with Google Translate and this story in Swedish.

    The book can be found here on Fayard.fr

  • A few months ago, I started taking swimming lessons. At 42, I bought my first swim cap and pair of goggles, and joined a handful of other adults at our local YMCA for a six-week course. I ignored my pasty white legs and tried to look nonchalant. I regretted my vibrant blue swimsuit after noticing that the other students had on more subdued choices. The first day, and I was already wearing the wrong thing. It felt like high school, but with wrinkles.

    Read The Washington Post

  • A coach with the STAR Swim club is under investigation by police for inappropriate cell phone contact with a minor.

    The Erie County District Attorney’s Office says this is an ongoing investigation and Hamburg Police are the lead agency on the case.

    7 Eyewitness News received a letter from a concerned parent about the investigation. The parent says the club sent home a letter regarding what happened.

    The letter says parents of a swimmer contacted the club after finding out the coach had inappropriately texted and e-mailed their child.

    See WBKW

  • Adam Peaty’s world record in the 100 breaststroke today at the British nationals capped off a session in which he was the only person to beat the very tough automatic qualifying times for the world championship team set by British Swimming.

    Peaty blazed through the final with a 57.92, beating the world record of 58.46 by Cameron Van Der Burgh swum at the 2012 Olympics. Peaty split 27.04 at 50 meters to put him just three hundredths ahead of Van Der Burgh’s split then churned out a stunning 30.88 to become the first swimmer under 58 seconds.

    Read SwimmingWorld and see the result list.

    Image courtesy of deepbluemedia.eu

  • Don’t call it Ishmael; the remotely operated underwater vehicle is named Hercules. Used by the Nautilus Live expedition to explore the depths of the sea, Hercules is one of a pair of robots live-streaming the depths of the ocean. Yesterday, south of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico and at a depth of almost 2000 feet, Hercules (and anyone lucky enough to be watching the live stream at the time) caught something extraordinary on camera: a sperm whale.

    See Popular Science