Swimmer's Daily

  • World Cup winner and former World Player of the Year Fabio Cannavaro has been given a 10-month custodial sentence for breaking into his own home.

    The retired footballer, who captained Italy to World Cup glory in 2006, had been ordered to stay out of his Naples address after prosecutors claimed that elements of the property breached planning regulations.

    They said that Cannavaro hadn’t properly applied for planning permission for development of the house and surrounding grounds, which was seized by authorities.

    Prosecutor Luigi Cannavale said that Cannavaro, along with his wife, Daniela Arenoso and brother Paolo, who is a professional footballer in Italy’s top division, broke a seal restricting entry to the property and went swimming in the pool.

    Read CNN

    Photo by HotGossipItalia

  • A 17-year-old boy who had been swimming in an apartment complex’s Olympic-size indoor pool while wearing sweatpants drowned on Wednesday, prosecutors said.

    Ibrahim Iqbal, of New York City, had been swimming for some time in the pool at the Crystal Village Apartments in Attleboro, where he had been staying with relatives, and his cousin was nearby, Bristol County district attorney’s office spokesman Gregg Miliote said.

    Iqbal initially had been doing laps in the pool but then started swimming to the bottom of the 9-foot deep end, touching the bottom and coming back up for air, Miliote said. His cousin, who was with him at the pool but wasn’t swimming, said he did this several times before failing to come back up for air.

    Read ABC, NY Daily News, 7News

    7News Boston WHDH-TV

  • Diana Nyad, who made history as the first person to swim across the Florida Straits without a shark cage, isn’t scared of wading into another challenge — theater.

    The 65-year-old endurance swimmer is performing “Onward! The Diana Nyad Story,” a one-woman show in Key West, Florida, near the spot where in 2013 she achieved her dream of 35 years.

    “I think the show has a little bit of a lightening-in-a-bottle to it. I think big and I’d love to make it to Broadway,” she said by phone Friday. “But, as I’ve learned with anything, the only way to get there is to work quietly and slowly, step by step by step.”

    Read StarTribune

  • Former Miami Dolphins fullback Rob Konrad wasn’t exaggerating when he said he was stranded in the ocean for 16 hours after falling overboard last month.

    The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission confirmed Konrad’s account of what happened after investigating the incident that occurred Jan. 7.

    According to the review, which was obtained by the Miami Herald on Wednesday, Konrad was “thrown overboard when a wave hit the side of the vessel” around 12:30 p.m. ET on Jan. 7.

    Konrad tried to swim back to his boat, but the boat was on auto pilot and moving away from him at a rate of about 5 mph. At that point, Konrad decided that swimming west would be his best hope to reach land.

    After 16 hours and 12 minutes at sea, Konrad finally reached land at 4:42 a.m. on Jan. 8 after swimming nine miles. The former Dolphins fullback ended up on the shores of Riviera Beach in Palm Beach County, Fla.

    Read CBS Sports

  • A high-speed collision between my shoulder and somebody else’s knee during a tag-rugby match smashed my clavicle and resulted in my arm being put in a sling for three weeks. During the ensuing lay-off – when even the simplest activity, such as dressing, became an epic struggle – I reached an irrevocable conclusion: my days of competitive field sports were over.

    This led to an obvious question for someone the wrong side of 40: what activity could I take up to stay in shape? It would have to be injury-free while still presenting a physical challenge, not cost too much and, better still, be something indoors and out of the cold. But, most of all, it had to fit into my family and professional lives.

    Joining a gym was the obvious choice but, after a visit to the Markievicz Leisure Centre in Dublin 2, an even better solution presented itself. An instructor there mentioned that the annual membership subscription, a snip at a special rate of €229, also included access to the pool.

    Swimming? Now that ticked every box for me. It can be as demanding as you make it, works the entire body and, given my age, is something I could keep up for many years. Best of all, though, I’d hardly be risking a repeat of my broken clavicle experience and the pool was next door to the office so I could swim before work or during my lunch break.

    Read The Irish Times

  • Inside a small college in Conway, some of the best swimmers in Central Arkansas are racing for a trip to the state tournament. The stands are packed with parents, but most are cheering for one swimmer in particular: the swimmer in lane seven.

    He can hear it and feel it, but he can’t see it.

    “Worthy was born with a veil over his eyes,” said his mom, Bo Springer.

    Worthy Springer is blind.

    “He doesn’t see the ceiling or floor so he doesn’t have any boundaries,” Bo said. “He doesn’t accept the word I cannot. That is not in his vocabulary.”

    “Ever since my youth, I’ve never been concerned about what’s in front of me,” said Worthy.

    See KATV

  • A life-size statue commemorating fallen lifeguard Ben Carlson could soon be keeping watch over the Newport Beach coastline.

    City leaders, along with members of the Ben Carlson Memorial and Scholarship Foundation, are currently determining whether the Newport Pier or the Balboa Pier will be home to a 9-foot tall sculpture of the late lifeguard. The Newport Beach Arts Commission is expected to discuss and possibly take action on plans for the statue at its next meeting.

    Read LA Times

  • As Missy Franklin started to walk out of Berkeley’s Haas Pavilion, she flung her backpack over her shoulder and asked, “Anyone want to go to sociocultural anthropology?”

    There were no takers. Which is too bad. The sophomore swimmer won’t be able to offer that kind of invitation for much longer. The daily college grind portion of the 19-year-old Olympic champion’s life is about to end, at least for a little while. Franklin’s leaving Cal’s swim team to turn pro, eyes set on the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

    “This will, I guess, really start my professional career,” Franklin said of her upcoming transition. “This way I’ll be able to start my job and start my career and really start saving the money that’s going to sustain me, and hopefully, my future family for a while.”

    Read San Francisco Chronicle

  • One way to test your mettle in winter is to take one of those quick penguin plunges in icy water. But some stoic swimmers actually carve pools out of frozen lakes and race each other.

    The sport of winter swimming is popular abroad, especially in Russia, Scandinavia and China. But last weekend, a newly formed organization to promote winter swimming in the United States held its first national competition on the Vermont-Quebec border.

    Wrapped in down coats, competitors from all over the world waited in a warm lakeside restaurant in Newport, Vt., for the races to start. More than two dozen people from around the country raced in a two lane pool cut into the icy lake.

    Hometown favorite Brynna Tucker arrived with a cheering section of family and friends.

    “Yeah, it’s acclimating to the cold because most people forget that cold actually feels good,” she says. “If you have a sore knee, if you have a sore elbow, you put an ice pack on it, and the first nine seconds of that, it’s horrible.”

    But around the 10th second of swimming in icy water, she says her body shuts down in an oddly relaxing way.

    Read and listen to NPR

    http://youtu.be/pErXIP7mmjo